Beginner needs advice

[harrismh777]

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