Chris Angelico wrote:
Both versions of Python are
the same language, because they "think" the same way;
I appreciate your thought. And there is an obvious continuity in
philosophy between 2.x and 3.x; in fact even a cursory study of the
history of python demonstrates a concerted effort to build on the best
points of 2.x while eliminating the worst. 3.x builds upon and adds to
2.x, as (loosely) C++ builds on and adds to C. Perhaps python3 should
have been named Python+ ! ( I think I've already told yous guys that
I invoke python3 on my desk machine with--- Anaconda
I see your point. But, knowing that 3.x "thinks" like 2.x is not
helpful when we all know that languages don't think, people do. People
need to be able to understand the 'details' of the language in order to
be able to think with it...
Little syntactic
differences like whether 'print' is a function or a statement, and
whether the simple slash operator between two ints returns a float,
and the fact that Unicode is the default string type, are
comparatively minor; on 'most every philosophical point, the two
dialects agree.
Minor, yes, .... until you need to make something work--- only to be
frustrated to find that a detail that was not expected has risen to bite
a sensitive place... :)
I am amazed at how many folks are not using 3.x/ Why? (beats me),
but how do I know they're not using it...? Because, if they were
trying to use it with 2.x knowledge they would be complaining bloody
murder.. for instance, how do we reload a module in 2.x... with, um,
reload. This has always been the way... every book says so, and every
one of us has re-invoked a .py file by using relaod. Reload doesn't
even work on 3.x without an import. If you don't know that, well, you're
sol until you figure it out, read it, or somebody tells you. This ought
not to be. Even the environments of these two languages are
incompatible (partially) :)
PS Something nobody has pointed out yet is that "completely
incompatible" is redundant. ... its like saying totally destroyed.
I was trying to be funny, but nobody unpinned it... I'm disappointed.
Some of the posts here are referring to the two languages as partially
incompatible.... reminds me of that line from Princess Bride... "...
he's not dead, hes only mostly dead!... and mostly dead is partly
alive!" To say that 3.x is partly compatible with 2.x is silly, but to
say that 3.x 'thinks' the same way as 2.x is almost pythonesque... I
almost like that... :)
kind regards,
m harris
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