[Python-Dev] RELEASED Python 3.0 final (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Sat Dec 6 02:47:45 CET 2008

On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 4:49 PM, Thomas Wouters <thomas at python.org> wrote:

On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 19:10, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 11:27 PM, <glyph at divmod.com> wrote: > With all due respect, for me, "library support" and "serious use" are > synonymous. Glyph, I cannot have a discussion with you if every single post of yours is longer than my combined daily output. Please spend some time writing shorter posts. I'm sure I'm not the only one here with a short attention span. :-) Allow me to paraphrase glyph (with whom I'm in complete agreement, for what it's worth): many newbies will be disappointed by Python if they start with Python 3.0 and discover that most of the cool possibilities they had heard about are 'being worked on' and not quite ready. I don't doubt that 3.0 will be easier for the new programmer to learn, but I do not believe the average "Oh, I heard about Python, let's learn it" person should be pointed to 3.0 right now. They should be encouraged to learn 2.6 -- or even 2.5.

Thanks for the summary! Maybe Glyph should just pipe his email through you. :-)

Without more context it's impossible to make a good recommendation. Most people probably want to learn Python because they want to access some system for which Python is required -- whether that's Blender, Google App Engine, their Nokia cell phone, or something that some of their colleagues have written (most Googlers learning Python fall in that category :-). In that case they don't have a choice -- they should learn the version that is used by the system they want to use. Obviously that's going to be 2.x in most cases, at least for a while.

But I disagree that "most of the cool possibilities they have heard about" are necessarily third party libraries. Python's standard library has lots of stuff to offer.

In spite of Python being a programming language, there is a difference between 'casual user of the language' and 'library developer'; 3.0 is certainly a must for all actual library developers, and I'm sure most of them know about 3.0 by now. We're talking about first impressions for people without that knowledge.

Well if most library developers already know 3.0 by now, I would hope they aren't going to sit on their hands, and solve the issues at hand! In the mean time, I don't mind if people learn 3.0 first and 2.6 second. It's probably easier that way than the other way around. :-)

-- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list