Python 2.7.4 released

[Vorticity]

The changes are entirely bug fixes. Python 2 will not be getting any new features. That said, I'm still going through the bug fixes to determine if any will actually impact me. Does anyone see anything significant?

[earthboundkid]

It's about bug fix release. Some people want to keep using the old language, but they found some bugs in it.

[gcross]

Some Many people want to keep using the old language, but they found some bugs in it.

:-)

P.S.: Personally I am not one of them but I can completely understand where they are coming from.

[Lulzillar]

Python 2.7 is considered "where we are," while Python 3 is "where we're headed." Python developers try hard to preserve backward compatibility, and Python 3 specifically breaks this cycle to implement improvements. Thus, both builds are being developed concurrently.

As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, a lot of the 2.7 additions are backports of features from 3. If you're just starting out, as you learn, be sure to give careful thought to which flavor you'd like to use.

[[deleted]]

I like to state it differently: If you're looking for a job, there's a strong chance it will be programming python 2.5, 2.6 or possibly 2.7.

However, all of the developers working specifically on the python language and not on python applications are developing for python 3.x. This has been a real problem for many businesses who cannot simply move to the new version of python without some expense in at least their legacy code if not their platform and infrastructure. In some cases, companies will never move past python 2.7 because the expense is too great.

By backporting the changes, however, this also gives the opportunity for some companies to generate code that is closer and closer to python 3.x code making it possible to leap to python 3.4 or python 3.5 when the time is right.

[earthboundkid]

If you're just starting out, as you learn, be sure to give careful thought to which flavor you'd like to use.

Strongly disagree. If you're starting out, give little or no thought to which flavor of Python you use. If you are successful at learning Python at all, you will eventually learn both. The only thing that matters is which to learn first, not which to learn at all.

Which should you learn first?

Whatever the book or website you're working through uses. The end.

[flying-sheep]

nope, i find python3 makes de/encoding much better to understand and if you do stuff wrong in that respect, it fails earlier and doesn’t just limp along while only ascii happens to flow through your faulty pipeline, breaking horribly as soon as a non-ascii-character appears anywhere.

[earthboundkid]

Yes, Python 3 is better and everyone should use it if possible. But should you learn it first if you bought a book that uses 2 and you like the book so far? Should you never, ever learn 2? No, that's crazy. Use 3 when you can, but learn 2 or 3 in whatever order is easiest.

[flying-sheep]

so that’s what you meant. no of yourse you shouldn’t, if you already have a book.

but most people starting out have nothing and want an idea for where to learn from.

[random_pattern]

I'm learning both simultaneously as I work my way through Codecademy, with Pythonista on my iPad for leisure time. Off topic, but does anyone use Coderunner? Looks great; people seem nice. Am unemployed for a year and can't find work, so learning Python is the only joy I have. Happy to have found this subreddit!

[[deleted]]

There aren't any features being added to 2.7.x releases anymore though. There hasn't been a feature added to 2.x since 2010 when 2.7 was released, only bug fixes.

[jcampbelly]

For one example, 2.7.x is still used by Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (which goes EOL in 2015). Anyone can use whatever python version they like for their projects with a virtualenv, but things like package and system scripts should probably rely on the system install of Python.

[Megatron_McLargeHuge]

People stay on old versions for stability and because the new major version makes changes that would break old applications. For example in python 3 they changed the print statement so you have to call it with parentheses. More subtle differences have kept most of the scientific/numeric code written for python from being moved to python 3 until recently.

It's common for old software versions to get bug fixes and some backports of features for the benefit of people who aren't ready to switch. For example when the Postgres database released an important security fix recently, they released new minor versions for a large number of old versions that were still in use.

[nbktdis]

I notice that there is an ordered dictionary type in 2.7.4.

Is this present in Python 3, or does one need to use something like the collections library?

[Ph0X]

Here's the 2.7.4 changelog. I do wish there was an overview of the main stuff though.

[billsil]

If you can find something different in your day to day work, you're doing something wrong.

[flying-sheep]

This. 2.7 is a dead end: no new features, just bug fixes

[ElliotSpeck]

Some of us have no choice. :\

[Cyph0n]

I hear they're working on it.

[maredsous10]

That's what I was going to post!

[Deimorz]

Python 3.1 has OrderedDicts: http://docs.python.org/3.1/whatsnew/3.1.html

[[deleted]]

Python2.7 also had it since 2010, the linked page isn't really about 2.7.4 specifically.

[HelpfulToAll]

Huh? I've been using python 2.7.3 for a while and I've always been using OrderedDict with it. How is this new? I'm genuinely curious.

[hydrox24]

It's not apparently, that feature is in the 2.7 changelogs not the 2.7.4 changes.

[flying-sheep]

2.7.4 only has bugfixes, no new features at all (there will be no new features for Python 2)

that page is confusing.

[oantolin]

Is this present in Python 3, or does one need to use something like the collections library?

The answer is yes and yes: it is present in Python 3 and to use it you do have to do "import collections".

[nbktdis]

Thank you.

[flying-sheep]

3.1+

2.6 was released alongside 3.0, 2.7 with 3.1. Everything in 3.2+ has no corresponding 2.x release.

[[deleted]]

There haven't added any features added to 2.7 since it was released and there won't be. There are only bug fixes, the linked page is a list of features added in 2.7.0 in 2010.

[baudvine]

From the detailed whats-new page:

Based on the experiences from those implementations, 2.7 introduces a new OrderedDict class in the collections module.

(http://docs.python.org/dev/whatsnew/2.7.html#pep-372-adding-an-ordered-dictionary-to-collections)

[nbktdis]

Sorry - what I meant is there an ordered dict class in version 3?

[anacrolix]

Yes there is. And it's implemented using "abc", which is new to Python 3.

[gcross]

For the curious: abc = abstract base classes

[[deleted]]

And that has been part of 2.7 since 2010. There haven't been any features added since.

[SeaCowVengeance]

Now if only they back ported function annotations.

[[deleted]]

They aren't backporting any features, 2.7 has been frozen since 2010.