Head First Python, 2nd Edition

Appendix C. Top Ten Things we Didn’t Cover: There’s Always More to Learn

It was never our intention to try to cover everything.

This book’s goal was always to show you enough Python to get you up to speed as quickly as possible. There’s a lot more we could’ve covered, but didn’t. In this appendix, we discuss the top 10 things that—given another 600 pages or so—we would’ve eventually gotten around to. Not all of the 10 things will interest you, but quickly flip through them just in case we’ve hit on your sweet spot, or provided an answer to that nagging question. All the programming technologies in this appendix come baked in to Python and its interpreter.

1. What About Python 2?

As of this book’s publication date (late 2016) there are two mainstream flavors of Python in widespread use. You already know quite a bit about Python 3, as that’s the flavor you’ve used throughout this book.

All new language developments and enhancements are being applied to Python 3, which is on a 12- to 18-month minor release cycle. Release 3.6 is due before 2016 ends, and you can expect 3.7 to arrive late in 2017 or early in 2018.

Python 2 has been “stuck” at release 2.7 for some time now. This has to do with the fact that the Python core developers (the people who guide the development of Python) decided that Python 3 was the future, and that Python 2 should quietly go away. There were solid technical reasons ...