"Charles Hottel" <chot...@earthlink.net> writes: > I have a lot of programming experience in many different languages and now > I want to learn Python.
Good for you, and welcome! > Which version do you suggest I download, Python 2.x or Python 3.x ? > Also why should I prefer one over the other? This question is a good one. It is common enough that the home page <URL:http://www.python.org/> has a link to the community's answer/discussion at <URL:http://wiki.python.org/moin/Python2orPython3>. > Right now I am thinkng Python 3.x as it has been out since 2008, but I > have some concerns about backward compatibility with older packages > that I might want to use. The fact that Python 3 has been out for a number of years is important, as is the fact that the Python developers and the community of third-party library developers have worked quite hard to make it feasible to work in Python 3. More important, from the perspective of a newcomer, is that Python 2 is essentially in maintenance-only mode, receiving only bug fixes. All larger improvements are only going into Python 3. The set of third-party libraries which are not ready for Python 3 still has some significant members, and will certainly never be zero. But that set has shrunk significantly in the many years that Python 3 has been active. At this stage, I would advise any person wanting to learn Python qua Python (i.e. without considering the wrinkles of some specific task) to focus on Python 3. If you need to learn older versions, that need will present itself and you can learn the legacy quirks then; for now, learn Python the way it is intended to be by going for Python 3. -- \ “A lie can be told in a few words. Debunking that lie can take | `\ pages. That is why my book… is five hundred pages long.” —Chris | _o__) Rodda, 2011-05-05 | Ben Finney -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list