still a valid book?

[John Salerno]

Scott David Daniels wrote:
> John Salerno wrote:
>> Jonathan Gardner wrote:
>>> You may want to read
>>> http://python.org/doc/2.4.2/whatsnew/whatsnew24.html to get an idea of
>>> what has changed from 2.3 to 2.4 if you buy the 2.3 book.
>>>
>> Yeah, I was looking at that, but it seems a little over my head right 
>> now. I just didn't want to learn anything and then have to "unlearn" it. 
>> I'm sure I will always be adding new things, so that isn't so much the 
>> problem I guess.
> Python remains _extremely_ compatible from one minor version to the next
> (2.2 to 2.3, 2.3 to 2.4, ...) Python 3000 (which may well be Python 3.0)
> is allowed to break compatibility, _but_ it won't be conceptual
> compatibility; it will just discard "old stuff we no longer like."  I
> would suggest you don't pay much attention to "old-style classes":
>       class WhatEver:
>          ...
> and only use "new-style" classes:
>      class SomeClass(object):
>          ...
> since the "old-style classes" are going away (the "class Name: ..."
> syntax will start defining new-style classes as well).  Starting with
> 2.3 will put you quite near the modern edge, and the changes you will
> have to learn are not that great. People are still running code written
> under 1.5.2, so 2.3 is really quite modern.
> 
> --Scott David Daniels
> scott.daniels at acm.org

Thanks for the advice.