Why Python 3?

[Chris Angelico]

On Sat, Apr 19, 2014 at 9:53 PM, Steve Hayes <hayesstw at telkomsa.net> wrote:
>>Some say 'Python 3 is the future, use it for everything now' and other
>>say 'Python 3 is the future but you can't do everything in it now so
>>use Python 2'.
>
> Yes, that made me more or less abandon my attempt to learn Python.
>
> I had Python 3 on my computer (came on one of those freebie discs you get with
> magazines, I think) and my son had a book on it, so I thought with the program
> and the instructions I should be able to learn something.
>
> It took me a week, with some help from this forum, to get the Print statement
> to work.

If your book and your interpreter didn't match, then that's a problem,
just as if you were working with different versions of any other
software. (Can you imagine reading through a Microsoft Excel tutorial
and trying to do the exercises in a different version of Excel?) The
print statement wouldn't work because there isn't one; the print
*function* will work quite happily, though. All you need is for
someone to explain it to you as a function, and you'll be fine.

ChrisA