Skip to content

Rewrite section on choosing a Python version #287

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Merged
kennethreitz merged 1 commit into from
Jun 29, 2013
Merged

Rewrite section on choosing a Python version #287

Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
1 commit
Select commit
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
39 changes: 17 additions & 22 deletions docs/starting/which-python.rst
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -3,37 +3,32 @@ Picking an Interpreter

.. _which-python:

Which Python to use?


2.x vs 3.x
~~~~~~~~~~

Python 2.x is the status quo, Python 3.x is the shiny new thing.


`Further Reading <http://wiki.python.org/moin/Python2orPython3>`_


Today
-----
Today (Python 2)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you're choosing a Python interpreter to use, I *highly* recommend you use
Python 2.7.x, unless you have a strong reason not to.

Also use Python 2.7.x if you're starting to work on a new Python module. If you
have managed to get it working on 2.7, you can add support for older 2.x
versions.

The Future
----------
The Future (Python 3)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As more and more modules get ported over to Python3, the easier it will be for
others to use it.
Python 2.x is the status quo, Python 3.x is the shiny new thing.

`Further Reading <http://wiki.python.org/moin/Python2orPython3>`_

Which Python to Support?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Python 3, on the other hand, differs much more greatly from Python 2, so
writing code that works both on Python 2 and Python 3 is a very complicated
process.

If you're starting work on a new Python module, I recommend you write it for
Python 2.5 or 2.6, and add support for Python3 in a later iteration.
It is still possible to `write code that works on Python 2.6, 2.7 and 3.3
<http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2013/5/21/porting-to-python-3-redux/>`_. Depending on
the kind of software you are writing, this might be either tricky or extremely
hard, and if you're a beginner there are much more important things to worry
about.

Implementations
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Expand Down