The Evolution of Python 3

chromatic writes to tell us that O'Reilly has an interview with Guido van Rossum on the evolutionary process that gave us Python 3.0 and what is in store for the future. "I'd like to reiterate that at this point, it's a very personal choice to decide whether to use 3.0 or 2.6. You don't run the risk of being left behind by taking a conservative stance at this point. 2.6 will be just as well supported by the same group of core Python developers as 3.0. At the same time, we're also not sort of deemphasizing the importance and quality of 3.0. So if you are not held back by external requirements like dependencies on packages or third party software that hasn't been ported to 3.0 yet or working in an environment where everyone else is using another version. If you're learning Python for the first time, 3.0 is a great way to learn the language. There's a couple of things that trip over beginners have been removed."

Comments

Re:Probably not an issue for beginners?

[morgan_greywolf]

Unless you're trying to learn how to code Django apps, which won't work on Python 3.0. Neither will a lot of other 3rd party modules.

Re:Probably not an issue for beginners?

[Random BedHead Ed]

Not really. Keep learning 2.x as you were. Quoth Guido:

http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=211200

Ignore 3.0 for now. If you encounter it, there is a handy script to help update your code, though most of the language is unchanged. The biggest gotcha is that print is now a function print() rather than a statement.

Getting into Python 3

[dedazo]

For those interested, IBM is running a primer series on the new language/runtime features.

There's also this older (but still relevant) PEP that explains things that did not change between the 2.x series and 3.0.

Personally, I'm not looking forward to migrating existing code bases (especially non-trivial ones) to 3.0, but I'm planning to do all new development against it (of course assuming that the various packages I use have ports).

For Python trivia lovers, here the the actual moment in time when 3.0 was let loose on the world. I'm such a sentimental geek :)

Re:In all seriousness

[AlexMax2742]

There is a standard