Python recommendations

Question

I have developed some internal tools for working using Python. I used version 2.5 (or 2.6 / 2.7) for this and my personal projects, since they worked perfectly with Django and GAE. My question is: should I switch to version 3 or wait and continue to work with 2.5 / 2.6 / 2.7. How stable is 3.0 compared to 2.x? And what is the switching curve? Thanks.

Answer 1

Python 3 is not supported by Django and quite a few other notable projects. Although Python 3 (current version 3.2.1 IIRC) is fairly stable, this is not a problem. The real problem is adoption and library support, and Python 3 is still missing. I do not know anyone who used it in production.

The learning curve for switching is pretty small. You can pretty much find out everything you need, What's New in Python 3 , and most porting of the code is pretty trivial.

I would not recommend that you switch everything that you use in production or professionally to Python 3. It is good to use Python 3 for your personal projects if the libraries you use support it (for example, the Django project will not be able to use Python 3). Similarly for AppEngine; you will have to stick with Python 2.5 for this.

So, in short, you can play with Python 3, but it’s not wise to use it at work, because it probably doesn’t support the libraries you need, and it has not been widely installed as Python 2.x. I would start thinking about Python 3 and get to know it, but for now I’m not switching.

You may also be interested in Should I choose Python 2 or 3 .