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I have to serve the student's needs before any in the community, and there's a very practical reason for going with Python2: The vast majority of code out there is in Py2, so if someone learns Py2 first, they can start coding and doing stuff right now. If they stumble onto a need for Py3 later, then they would have the skill to learn Py3 from the tutorial and other books. If they learn Py3 first, then immediately they have to learn Py2 because there's simply too much code out there that uses it. This will frustrate beginners as the next thing they need to do after my book is start using Python to make things. When the situation changes, and not just because the Python leaders say it does, then I'll update the book. Honestly though, I think Go, Rust, Nim, and Clojure have a better chance at widespread adoption than Python3 at this point. Incidentally, the mistake that the Python3 project made was to not use a virtual machine that could run both 2 and 3 byte code. If I can run tons of languages on my CPU, the JVM, and the .NET CLR, then Python3 could have run both 2 and 3. I predict that to get people on the new version of Python they will have to make Python4 and have it run 2,3 and 4 seamlessly so that it won't matter how much code is out there in any version of the language. Just my .02 on that topic. |