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

Bill Janssen janssen at parc.com
Sat Dec 6 04:22:18 CET 2008

Thomas Wouters <thomas at python.org> wrote:

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.

I think that's right.

I was asked this question today, and it comes up (to me) fairly often at PARC. I usually suggest using the Python version that's standard for the user's platform, if they use OS X or Linux (and most do), which is typically 2.5 (for OS X Leopard), and 2.4 (for Linux -- may be out of date). For Windows users, I suggest the latest release (2.6).

Bill

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