Newbie question - probably FAQ (but not exactly answered by regularFAQ)

[Banibrata Dutta]

Hi,

I've gone through the list of "language differences" between 2.3 / 2.4
& 2.5 of CPython. I've spend around 2 weeks now, learning v2.5 of
CPython, and I consider myself still very very newbie. So, unable to
take a call as to how-important or desirable the newer language
features are -- so whether to write my app for v2.5 of Python, versus,
as few others on this list have recommended, i.e. to stick to v2.3 ??
Are the preformance improvements, and memory footprint / leak fix in
2.5 enough to justify moving to it ? What all do I stand to lose (or
gain) by writing on v2.3 ??

I've a constraint due to which I might have to also write parts of my
app (client side) in Jython (because I want to eventually ship Java --
yet benefit from the rapid development and clarity of Python). Would
sticking to v2.3 in such a case be a better idea ? Suggestions with
reasoning would be very helpful.

 

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Nick Craig-Wood a écrit :

If you are writing for 2.3 you are writing for 2.4 and 2.5 also.

There are some nice things in 2.4 and 2.5 but nothing you really need
IMHO.

There are some nice things in Python but nothing you really need neither
- could have the same result in C or assembly !-)

<OP>
Ok, if you're newbie to programming, the new stuff in 2.4 and 2.5 might
not be that useful to you right now. But the real question is mostly: do
you have any reason to stick to 2.3 ?

Jython seems to be based off python 2.2

It is so far. But Sun recently hired Jython's maintainers, so we may
have a much more up to date Jython version in a foreseeable future.

 

[Banibrata Dutta]

Nick Craig-Wood a écrit :

There are some nice things in Python but nothing you really need neither -
could have the same result in C or assembly !-)

<OP>
Ok, if you're newbie to programming, the new stuff in 2.4 and 2.5 might not
be that useful to you right now. But the real question is mostly: do you
have any reason to stick to 2.3 ?
</OP>

Newbie to Python yes, not to programming. But does that change
anything -- i.e. to impact my decision ?

It is so far. But Sun recently hired Jython's maintainers, so we may have a
much more up to date Jython version in a foreseeable future.

Well, I need to start somewhere, and I want that "somewhere" to be a
decent-enough point.

As such 2.6 & 3.0 are also cooking, but from what I see on the mailing
list, some of the features are a bit controversial. So if I start with
2.5 now, unless there are some break-thru preformance gains, or
annoying defects fixed, I'd stick to it. If I can do something
"well-enough" with 2.5, I'd not refactor for 2.6, for quite some
fore-seeable future.

 

[cokofreedom]

2.5 seems the defacto standard now for a new user, NB: probably not
the standard for the common business productions. However are you on
Windows or *nix? *nix may ship a certain version, so for ease of use
it would be best to use that.

Personally I use 2.5 because it is a complete version, and the latest
fully released giving me a lot of features to play with. But as
previously put if you are starting out, you are very unlikely to need
a huge amount of those features for a while.

So my opinion is used 2.5, it is released with no huge new feature
updates to come and won't break on random errors. (Unless you find a
real new one!). Also new is cool...