[Tutor] Bad time to get into Python?

[Alan Gauld]

"Dotan Cohen" <dotancohen at gmail.com> wrote

> coming of Python3 and the new syntax, is this a bad time to start
> learning Python? I don't want to learn 2.x if 3.x will replace it,

3.x won't be the end of changes in Python, amy more than
other languages change. While the changes for 3.x will be
bigger than for previous languages my understanding is
that they ae not huge and certainly not as big as the
jump from VB6 to VB.NET for example.

A coming version change is never a good reason not
to learn a language IMHO. More important is to ask
why learn that language in the first place? What will
it offer that your current skills don;t already provide?
If you can answer that question positively then the
version change will likely make no significant change
to the cost/benefit equation.

> That asked, I've heard that 2.6 can be configured
> to warn when using code that will not run in 3.x.
> Is this correct? How is this done?

I beliebe you re right but don;t know the mechanism.
But I should think it equally likely that there will be
tools available either with the release or very soon
after thart will, at the very least, identify the areas
needing change - if not actually making most of
the changes for you. This nearly always happens
with significant language upgrades.

> version of python on this machine. I want my own apps to throw 
> errors,
> but not other python apps on this system. Is there some error-level
> code that I can run?

I'm not clear what you mean by that bit.

-- 
Alan Gauld
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld