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leftovers

#2: Using Python 2

If you remember way back in the Readme, we stated we were
using release 3 of Python in this book. Of course, there’s much
more to Python that just release 3, as the previous version of the
language, release 2, is still very, very popular.
And rightly so. Python 2 has been around for nearly a decade
and has an impressive collection of technologies built around it,
including Google’s App Engine, the Django Web Framework, Zope’s
Content Management System, and the Twisted Networking Libraries (to
name just a few).
Despite all the Python 2 goodness out there, we still went with
release 3 for this book and our reasoning was very simple: better to
go with the future than settle on the past. The good folks that bring the
world Python have stated that Python 3 is where all the cool, new
stuff will happen with the language. Release 2 has entered what’s
known as bug-fix mode only: if something is found in 2 that is broken,
it’ll be fixed, but no new features will be added.
And here’s the good news: there’s not much difference between the
code you’ve been writing for Python 3 and what you would write
for release 2, should you find yourself in the position of needing to
(perhaps as a result of needing to fix some existing Python 2 code or
working with a technology that’s based on Python 2).

Here are a few lines of Python 2 code that highlight some of the
differences:

In Python 3, the “raw_input()” function
is called “input()”.

age = raw_input("How old are you? ")
if int(age) > 30:
print "Sorry, but you’re past it!"
else:
print "You still have hope ... for now!"
Python 2 does
not require the
parentheses with
the call to “print”,
whereas Python 3
does.

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