Is this a good time to start learning python?

[lbonafide at yahoo.com]

On Apr 1, 2:11 pm, "Eduardo O. Padoan" <eduardo.pad... at gmail.com>
wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 3:57 PM,  <lbonaf... at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > On Apr 1, 12:47 pm, "Gabriel Genellina" <gagsl-... at yahoo.com.ar>
> >  wrote:
> >  > En Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:57:55 -0300, <lbonaf... at yahoo.com> escribió:
>
> >  > > On Mar 31, 1:36 pm, "Gabriel Genellina" <gagsl-... at yahoo.com.ar>
> >  > > wrote:
>
> >  > >> Don't be scared by the "backwards incompatible" tag - it's the way to
> >  > >> get
> >  > >> rid of nasty things that could not be dropped otherwise.
>
> >  > > I would consider breaking production code to be "nasty" as well.
>
> > > Please explain how the existence of Python 3.0 would break your production
> >  > code.
>
> >  The existence of battery acid won't hurt me either, unless I come into
> >  contact with it.  If one eventually upgrades to 3.0 -- which is
> >  ostensibly the desired path -- their code could break and require
> >  fixing.
>
> And how would this happen? I dont know of any good software
> distribution that upgrades a component to another major revision
> without asking first. The desired path is that, if somene wants to
> port his software to Python 3.0, that he follow the migration plan.

Of course, that's the point.  If you want to upgrade to the next
version of Python, you have to fix your code.   That stinks.  Your
other alternative is to remain stuck with Python 2.x, but eventually
the support for that will dry up.

> Final users will install Python 3.0 as python3.0 anyway, with Python
> 2.x as default 'python' binary.
>
> >  Backward compatibility is important.   C++ could break all ties with C
> >  to "clean up" as well, but it would be a braindead move that would
> >  break existing code bases upon upgrade.
>
> C++ is not C. No one "upgrades" from C to C++.

You misunderstand.  C++ has a lot of "warts" to maintain backwards
compatibility with C.  The standards committee could eliminate these
warts to make the language "cleaner", but it would break a lot of
systems.