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AgentConundrum | 12 years ago
I don't know Python, but I've gone through a few phases where I'll play with it for a bit and then put it back down. (Incidentally, I appear to be entering a "play" phase right now.)
I can't explain it exactly, but the 2/3 thing makes me really uneasy about learning the language.
On one side, there is Python 2 which is supposed to die in the non-immediate future. I don't need to learn it, particularly since development isn't my primary career at the moment and I'm unlikely to "need" it before I inevitably switch careers back to dev. If I don't need it now, and I don't expect to be in a situation where I need it in the near future, why not go for Python 3 right away?
On the other side, Python 3 is the new hotness, and it's the future of the language. It's the heir apparent. It's going to be "the" Python in the nearer-than-you-think future.
But it doesn't seem ready. You get the impression that you'll start a greenfield project and then get to a point where you want to drop in a well-known component and you just won't be able to.
You also look at the fact that it's been around for over half a decade yet 80% of of respondents to this survey say they use 2 more than 3, 40% have never touched it, and 20% say the whole thing was a bad idea. If you were walking into that environment, would you really be so quick to disregard it?
I suppose the answer is to just learn it all and try to keep the differences in mind as you go, but it's understandable the a lot of people don't want to half to learn and semi-unlearn the same language all at once.
aidos|12 years ago
If you wanted to be safe you'd just start with 2 as it's easier to get help while learning the ecosystem. There's actually not much to learn / relearn when switching - the difficulty has been moving the dependencies to 3 (which is well underway now).