Re: Newbie question - probably FAQ (but not exactly answered by regular FAQ)

On 5/6/08, Bruno Desthuilliers
<bruno.42.desthuilliers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Nick Craig-Wood a écrit :
Banibrata Dutta <banibrata.dutta@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

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 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.
.