Books on Python now vs in 8 months.

[Phil Hunt]

In article <v04003a00b351d11d0329@[195.180.62.188]>
           peter.sommerfeld at gmx.de "Peter Sommerfeld" writes:
> Phil Voris  wrote:
> >I've been considering learning Python as a means of getting insight into
> >OO thinking.  I have been reluctant to by the snake or rat books because
> >I have read that future versions of Python -- mayber even versions as
> >early as later this year -- will be radicaly different and in some ways
> >backwards incompatible.  I ask myself if it's worthwhile to learn it one
> >way if it will change so quickly.  Does anyone have insight as to how
> >much it's _really_ going to change...?
> 
> Phil,
> forget about this. 1.5.2 (windows) has just been released. and next will be
> the backward compatible version 1.6 (+ a few minor releases). Version 2.0
> will then probably change the object model. But this is far away, lets say
> 3 to 5 years (who knows?). And Python will still be Python ...

If 2.0 changes the object model in way that cause serious 
incompatibilities, perhaps it should be called something other
than Python.

(Although I imagine reasonable speed improvements could be done in
a way that doesn't break existing code -- for example there could be
a keyword ``static'' which when applied to a class means that instances
of that class can't create new instance variablres at run time. This
would mean that accessing self.someVariable wouldn't involve a 
hashtable lookup, just an index in an array.

-- 
Phil Hunt....philh at vision25.demon.co.uk