Why Turn "Print" into "Print()"????

[Ulrich Eckhardt]

Prisoner at War wrote:
> On May 26, 1:37 am, "Gabriel Genellina" <gagsl-... at yahoo.com.ar> wrote:
>>
>>
>> The differences aren't so fundamental or important: it's not an entirely
>> new language, just some ugly old things are being removed or changed in
>> incompatible ways (at *some* time it was supposed to happen - but could
>> not happen on the 2.x series which has to remain backwards compatible)
>> Also, Python 3.0 will be released simultaneously with 2.6, and there will
>> be other 2.x releases. Python 2 won't magically disappear from Earth, I
>> don't think Linux distros will come with Python 3.0 by default anytime
>> soon (perhaps not before 3.1).
> 
> But I'd read that Python 3 is very different in many important ways.

Yes, and that is the reason it is version 3.x instead of another 2.x. Moving
to version 3 signals that some changes were done that are _not_ backward
compatible and not even intended to.

> I read it right there on the Py3K site!  I can't make sense of how,
> why, even what, exactly, but that's not a misimpression on my part,
> I certain nonetheless...it's not just cosmetic changes but important
> ones pertaining to a sort of "linguistic logic" I gather....

Well, cosmetic or important is always in the eye of the beholder. I
personally would say that they are important cosmetic changes. You don't
get any new features or a more Touring-complete language suddenly, but it
will be much more consistent because it doesn't have to maintain wrong
decisions of the past, like making 'print' a separate statement when a
function would do.

>> So learning Python with a book targeted to 2.5 isn't a waste of time -
>> not at all.
> 
> Well, I will be learning Python from the excellent materials available
> online, to be sure, but a book that I spend money for, well, I have
> "higher standards" for it, you know, one of which is that it doesn't
> get superseded so soon!

As already pointed out, Python 2 will not suddenly cease to exist and
knowledge about it won't suddenly be worthless either. I guess it will take
a few years until the use of Python 3 supercedes that of Python 2.

Uli

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