On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 4:49 PM, Thomas Wouters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 19:10, Guido van Rossum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 11:27 PM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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/) _______________________________________________ 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
