Re:Incrementally migrating over one million lines of code fr...
by bunderbunder on Wednesday February 06, 2019 @02:41PM
(#19098971)
FWIW, the latest version of LPTHW is focused on learning Python 3.
Beyond that, I personally don't find the arguments presented in versions of the book that recommend beginners learn Python 2 to be all that compelling. They read to me as one complaint about string handling that's wildly at odds with my own experience, nestled in a great big bowl of sour grapes about the fact that the breaking changes are happening in the first place.
The library support issue is a consideration, but depends heavily on what you want to do. My own sense has been that it's tools that are primarily used by devops and sysadmins that have the poorest Python 3 support, whereas the rest of the ecosystem is more-or-less 100% migrated at this point. Many have already started to discontinue Python 2 support. So, if you're saying that you're at the "Hello World" stage, I'm guessing that you'll hit a lot fewer speed bumps if you just start with Python 3 and don't look back.
Beyond that, I personally don't find the arguments presented in versions of the book that recommend beginners learn Python 2 to be all that compelling. They read to me as one complaint about string handling that's wildly at odds with my own experience, nestled in a great big bowl of sour grapes about the fact that the breaking changes are happening in the first place.
The library support issue is a consideration, but depends heavily on what you want to do. My own sense has been that it's tools that are primarily used by devops and sysadmins that have the poorest Python 3 support, whereas the rest of the ecosystem is more-or-less 100% migrated at this point. Many have already started to discontinue Python 2 support. So, if you're saying that you're at the "Hello World" stage, I'm guessing that you'll hit a lot fewer speed bumps if you just start with Python 3 and don't look back.