I'm completely new to coding. Would you recommend starting with Python 2 (with its larger library) or learning Python 3 from the get-go? I'm not thrilled about learning an older version but is this the better route? I won't be doing this for a living just for my own uses.

Thank you in advance (:

Use Python 3. Version 2.7 won't have major updates anymore (only security). Plus most open source libraries have transitioned to 3.

Personally, 2.7 works for me. I can find every package I need and a bunch of them haven't been ported to 3 yet.

For reference, here's a real-time status of packages that support Python3:

https://python3wos.appspot.com/

Having made the transition, the only changes I had to do was to use parenthesis for print statements and to be aware that strings are now unicode by default.

Good read

Everyone I have spoken to seems to like Python.

If starting out, I'd say go with 3. In the long term, that's where it is going.

A lot of reason people are haning on to 2.x is it still works well, the package(s) they love haven't switched yet, and changing legacy code can be a *****.

I use 3 for all my stuff unless I need dpkt

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If starting out, I'd say go with 3. In the long term, that's where it is going.

A lot of reason people are haning on to 2.x is it still works well, the package(s) they love haven't switched yet, and changing legacy code can be a *****.

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There are an annoying number of books that still use Python 2 (I just got one on network programming that was published this year and all of the code samples are in Python 2). Of course, the problem exists in reverse too (some books use 3 not 2).

The way I see it, the 2/3 thing is going to cause some problems no matter which you pick, so might as well go with the newer version.

Thanks for all the advice.

CodeAcademy.com

Best book for version 3?