[Tutor] Hello, and a newbie question

[Alan Gauld]

On 16/04/13 16:58, Andy McKenzie wrote:

> 1) Python 2.7 or 3.x?  I know I'm going to want to do some work with
> NLTK (which appears to only have an alpha version out for Python 3), but
> I've just gone through the hassle of dealing with an upgrade from PHP 4
> to 5.3, and I'd rather not start learning something that's already
> obsolete.  Any words of advice?

Upgrading from P2 to P3 is not too onerous but there will be some 
changes to make at some po9nt.
However P2 is the one to go for if you want to do anything industrial 
just now because not all the 3rd party libraries (like NLTK) are fully 
ported to v3 yet, including some pretty significant ones.

OTOH If you are only experimenting/learning then going with P3 will 
avoid any relearning in the future.

> 2) Best practices.  I have the WROX Press Beginning Python book,

Sorry, I've never even seen that one so can't comment...

> <http://docs.python.org>?  I would assume that that would start putting
> me in the right habits from the beginning... is that accurate,

Yes, for existing programmers new to Python the official tutor is nearly 
always the best place to start. You can fill in the gaps elsewhere 
later. And the tutor is pretty short and fast paced, you can just about 
get through it all in an afternoon - certainly in a day.

-- 
Alan G
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.alan-g.me.uk/