Chapter 1. Current Status of Python
Python is good for developers.
No matter what operating system you or your customers are running, it will work. Unless you are coding platform-specific things, or using a platform-specific library, you can work on Linux and deploy on other systems, for example. However, that's not uncommon anymore (Ruby, Java, and many other languages work in the same way). Combined with the other qualities that we will discover throughout this book, Python becomes a smart choice for a company's primary development language.
This book is focused on the latest version of Python, 3.5, and all code examples are written in this version of the language unless another version is explicitly mentioned. Because this release is not yet widely used, this chapter contains some description of the current status quo of Python 3 to introduce readers to it, as well as some introductory information on modern approaches to development in Python. This chapter covers the following topics:
- How to maintain compatibility between Python 2 and Python 3
- How to approach the problem of environment isolation both on application and operating system level for the purpose of development
- How to enhance the Python prompt
- How to install packages using pip
A book always starts with some appetizers. So, if you are already familiar with Python (especially with the latest 3.x branch) and know how to properly isolate environments for development purposes, you can skip the first two sections of this chapter and just read the other sections quickly. They describe some tools and resources that are not essential but can highly improve productivity in Python. Be sure to read the section on application-level environment isolation and pip, though, as their installation is mandatory for the rest of the book.