On 17/04/13 01:58, 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?
Python 3.3 is awesome and much cleaner and better than 2.7, and 2.7 is
pretty damn good! So if you have a choice, pick 3.3. It's the future of
Python, 2.7 is the past.
But, 2.7 is still good, and if you need NLTK *right now* you might not have
a choice. (Unless you like being a guinea pig working with an alpha version.)
Also, the *incompatibilities* between 2.7 and 3.3 are fairly small. The
biggest difference from a beginner's perspective is that print is no longer
a statement, it is a function, so instead of writing this:
print "Hello world!"
you have to write this:
print("Hello world!")
That doesn't seem too onerous, does it? If you can cope with a few differences
of that complexity, why not learn both?
2) Best practices. I have the WROX Press Beginning Python book, which
targets Python 2. Clearly that's of only limited value if I'm going to go
with Python 3, but it looks like it's at least going to be a good overview.
But some of the stuff they do seems to be fairly personalized, rather than
trying to follow standards. Should I just start out with the tutorial from
docs.python.org? I would assume that that would start putting me in the
right habits from the beginning... is that accurate, or is there a better
way to go?
If there's a Python 3 version of "Learning Python", from O'Reilly Books (sorry
I forget the authors), give it a go. The first edition, at least, is an awesome
book although you will want a more recent version since the first edition
deals with Python 1.5, which truly is ancient history!
I haven't done the official Python tutorial, but from what I've seen of it,
it's pretty good.
--
Steven
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