Question

I have developed some internal tools at work using Python. I have been using version 2.5 (or 2.6/2.7) for that and my personal projects as they would work fine with Django and GAE. My question is – should I be switching to version 3 or shall I wait and continue to work with 2.5/2.6/2.7. How stable is 3.0 as compared to 2.x? And what is the switching curve? Thanks.

Answer 1

Python 3 isn’t supported by Django and quite a few other notable projects. Although Python 3 (current version is 3.2.1 IIRC) is plenty stable, that’s not the issues. The real issue is adoption and library support, and Python 3 does not have enough of either yet. I don’t know of anyone using it in production.

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

I would not recommend that you switch anything that you use in production or professionally to Python 3. For your personal projects, it’s okay to use Python 3 as long as the libraries you are using support it (for example, a Django project would not be able to use Python 3). Likewise for AppEngine; for that, you’ll have to stick to Python 2.5.

So, in short, you can play around with Python 3, but it’s not wise to use it at work because it likely does not support the libraries that you need, and it’s not widely installed like Python 2.x is. I’d start thinking about Python 3 and familiarize yourself with it, but don’t switch just yet.

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