Python 2 vs Python 3 for teaching

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 12:15 AM, beliavsky--- via Python-list
<python-list at python.org> wrote:
> I think Python 2.x is still used more than Python 3.x in scientific computing. The Python books I have in this area, such as "Python for Finance: Analyze Big Financial Data" and "Python for Data Analysis", still use Python 2.x . An aspiring computational scientist, data scientist, or financial quant may still be better off learning Python 2.x but using print(x) rather than print x and doing other things to future-proof his code.
>

That doesn't mean that Python 3 *can't* be used. Far as I know, all
the key libraries (numpy, pandas, statsmodels, scipy) are available
for Python 3 as well. Recommending the use of Python 2 simply because
all the books you have teach Python 2 is a purely circular argument.

But yes. If you're going to use Py2, aim for the common subset. Good
Py2 code is a lot more similar to good Py3 code than an enumeration of
language-level differences would suggest.

ChrisA