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Should I Start With Python 3.0? [closed]

Recently I decided to expand my programming horizons and learn the python programming language. While I have used python a little bit for classes in college and for a project or two at work I am by no means an expert. My question is as follows: should I bother with the 2.x releases or should I jump straight to 3.0? I am leaning towards 3.0 since I will be programming applications more for personal/learning use, but I wanted to see if there were any good arguments against it before I began.

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Jwsonic Avatar asked Aug 03 '09 14:08

Jwsonic


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1 Answers

Absolutely not 3.0 - 3.1 is out and is stabler, better, faster in every respect; it makes absolutely no sense to start with 3.0 at this time, if you want to take up the 3 series it should on all accounts be 3.1.

As for 2.6 vs 3.1, 3.1 is a better language (especially because some cruft was removed that had accumulated over the years but has to stay in 2.* for backwards compatibility) but all the rest of the ecosystem (from extensions to tools, from books to collective knowledge) is still very much in favor of 2.6 -- if you don't care about being able to use (e.g.) certain GUIs or scientific extensions, deploy on App Engine, script Windows with COM, have a spiffy third party IDE, and so on, 3.1 is advisable, but if you care about such things, still 2.* for now.

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Alex Martelli Avatar answered Oct 18 '22 18:10

Alex Martelli