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.

--
regards,
Banibrata
http://www.linkedin.com/in/bdutta

[Nick Craig-Wood]

Banibrata Dutta <ba*************@gmail.comwrote:

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 ??

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. So I'd say writing in a 2.3 subset would be perfectly sensible.

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.

Jython seems to be based off python 2.2 so you would be limited to 2.2
features in that case. No big deal in my opinion.

--
Nick Craig-Wood <ni**@craig-wood.com-- http://www.craig-wood.com/nick

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Nick Craig-Wood a écrit :

Banibrata Dutta <ba*************@gmail.comwrote:

> 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 ??

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 ?
</OP>

> 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.

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]

On 5/6/08, Bruno Desthuilliers
<br********************@websiteburo.invalidwrote :

Nick Craig-Wood a écrit :

Banibrata Dutta <ba*************@gmail.comwrote:

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 ??
>

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 ?
</OP>

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

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.
>

Jython seems to be based off python 2.2

It is so far. But Sun recently hired Jython's maintainers, so we may havea
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...

[Nick Craig-Wood]

Banibrata Dutta <ba*************@gmail.comwrote:

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.

I started programming with python at version 2.0 so I've seen it
evolve over the years.

In case you are interested here are some links to what has changed
from the different versions over the years.

2.0: http://www.amk.ca/python/2.0/
2.1: http://www.amk.ca/python/2.1/
2.2: http://www.python.org/doc/2.2.3/whatsnew/
2.3: http://www.python.org/doc/2.3/whatsnew/
2.4: http://www.python.org/doc/2.4.3/what...hatsnew24.html
2.5: http://docs.python.org/whatsnew/whatsnew25.html
2.5: http://docs.python.org/dev/whatsnew/2.6.html

I personally wouldn't like to use older than 2.2 any more. I find new
style classes, iterators and generators to be invaluable.

Features I like from 2.3's are enumerate, csv and datetime modules.

And from 2.4 I like the subprocess module (though it runs on 2.3 just
fine too - it just isn't included). I have occasionally used the
decorator syntax, but since it is syntactic sugar anyway it isn't
absolutely necessary.

In 2.5 has ctypes which is great though it is available as a 3rd party
module for 2.3 and 2.4. As is sqlite3.

So in my opinion the real difference between the 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5
are the built in modules. The actual language changes are very minor.

If you write your code for 2.5 which is probably a good idea, you'll
have no problem backporting it to 2.4, 2.3 or even 2.2 should that be
necessary.

--
Nick Craig-Wood <ni**@craig-wood.com-- http://www.craig-wood.com/nick