Many typical subprocess use cases can now be handled simply via the convenience functions:

  subprocess.call()
  subprocess.check_call()
  subprocess.check_output()

However, readers of the documentation could be forgiven for not realising that, since the docs dive right in with Popen() and will scare most readers away in search of more user friendly APIs (or even other languages).

The module documentation should be reordered to introduce the helper function first, then Popen afterwards.

The "subprocess replacements" [1] section would ideally help address this, but it hasn't been updated to use the convenience function, instead using confusing direct calls to Popen.

[1] http://docs.python.org/library/subprocess.html#subprocess-replacements