Resources/pointers for writing maintable, testable Python

[Chris Angelico]

On Thu, May 19, 2016 at 1:31 PM, Rustom Mody <rustompmody at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thursday, May 19, 2016 at 6:26:26 AM UTC+5:30, Ben Finney wrote:
>> Code Like A Pythonista was written in the Python 2 era
>> <http://python.net/~goodger/projects/pycon/2007/idiomatic/handout.html>
>> but is still excellent advice today.
>
>
> If <link> is python-2 and still the best excellent advice today
> doesn't it go somewhat counter to pyhthon-2 is a dead-end ?? :-)

Nope. Py2 is a dead end because it isn't moving forward. It's staying
right where it is. There can certainly be advice written about Python
2 that is worth reading, though. In fact, I have some books written
about REXX on OS/2 which I would recommend to someone learning Python
on Linux. I probably have some books from the 1980s that are still
worth reading. (Software books older than that won't be on my shelf,
but quite likely do exist.)

> Need to point this out since the opposite case to Chris'
> "switch to 3 or else suffer in hell..." needs to be articulated:

That is not my stance. Python 2 is still usable - it just isn't moving forward.

> Python-3 is nice but 2 is ok. The diffs are not such a big deal

The differences are getting to be a bigger and bigger deal. I wouldn't
advise anyone to use Python 2.4 unless compatibility with Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 5, because 2.4 misses out on heaps of stuff that
newer versions have. It's the same with 2.7 - use it if compatibility
with systems without 3.x is important, otherwise use the latest. (Of
course, that's new projects. Existing code implies a porting cost,
which has to be factored in; but making the jump to 3.5 or 3.6 is well
worth it IMO.)

ChrisA