On 8/25/05, Sjoerd Mullender <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > There is an important point, though. Recently I read complaints about > the lack of backward compatibility in Python on the fedora-list (mailing > list for users of Fedora Core). Somebody asked what language he should > learn and people answered, don't learn Python because it changes too > often in backward incompatible ways. They even suggested using that > other P language because that was much more backward compatible.
I think you're overstating what actually happened there. Here's the actual quote from the thread: : perl is more portable than python - programs written for perl are far : more likely to run on a new version of perl than the equivalent for : python. However, python is probably more readable and writable than perl : for a new user, and is the language most Fedora system utilities (e.g. : yum) are written in. Both perl and python run on Windows too. : : You have to be very careful about how you write your code to make it : portable to both environments. If you need a GUI, you'll need a : cross-platform GUI toolkit like Qt too. : : If it's only one language to learn, and you're a Fedora user, I'd go for : python. Yes, later there were additional posts about portability and backwards-compatibility, but they were for the most part factually incorrect (reliance on new 2.x features, not backwards-incompatibility, were the issue with CML1) and relied to "I heard that..." information So your point is well-taken, but the problem is one of user perception. That's not a dismissal of the problem--witness the "JAVA/LISP/Python is too slow" and "all PERL code is cryptic" memes. To me, this perception problem alone raises the bar on backwards compatibility. Even if obsoleted features are seldom useed, "$language breaks old code!" is a virulent meme, in both senses of the word. -- Tim Lesher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
