Beginner needs advice

[Dan Stromberg]

On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 7:40 AM, harrismh777 <harrismh777 at charter.net>wrote:

> Colin J. Williams wrote:
>
>> It would be safer to stick with Python 2.7 initially and then consider
>> the transition to 3.2 later.
>>
>
> I must disagree with Colin's statement. If you are a complete beginner with
> Python... then there is going to a learning curve for you... and that curve
> should be 3.2---  period.
>

I almost agree with this, but not quite: A newbie should start with 3.2, but
regrettably fall back to 2.7 -=IF=- there's a necessary dependency that
hasn't been updated for whatever project(s) they're working on.

>
> The point is that 3.x is completely incompatible with 2.x (some call it a
> dialect, but that is a lie). Python3 is the future of the language, and if
> you're new to Python, then learn 3.x, move forward and don't look back...
> seriously.
>

3.x and 2.x are not that extremely incompatible.  You usually can't just
take 2.x code and run it, unmodified, on 3.x.  However, there is a common
subset that is pretty viable.  EG:
http://stromberg.dnsalias.org/~dstromberg/backshift/

Backshift is a relatively substantial piece of code (4400 lines and
counting), but it runs fine on CPython 2.x, CPython 3.x, PyPy and Jython
(Jython just slightly post-2.5.2 - they aren't planning to cut a new release
that's compatible, but it's in their SCM), without any help from 2to3 or
3to2.  It was written from the start with the intent of being very portable.
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