I spent 6 months teaching myself Python before realizing I was learning the wrong version

Back in March I decided to finally learn Python for data analysis work. After watching tutorials for months I went to a meetup in Austin and found out I had been learning Python 2 instead of Python 3 the whole time. Nobody at the online forums I was on ever mentioned the difference. Has anyone else wasted time learning something outdated before checking what's actually used now?

2 comments

2 Comments

iris57414d ago

My buddy in Houston did the exact same thing but with R version 3.6 instead of 4.0 back in 2020. He had all these outdated packages that wouldn't even install properly anymore. Honestly though, learning the older version helped me understand the basics way better since Python 3 keeps changing so much every year now. The whole 2 vs 3 thing is kind of overblown for beginners because the core logic is the same, just some print statements and integer division differences.

jadew6314d ago

Wait, hold up - you said R version 3.6 back in 2020? That's INSANE to me because that version was already considered ancient even then. I remember trying to help someone with R 3.4 a while back and half the packages on CRAN just straight up refused to compile. The dependency hell with those old versions is something I wouldn't wish on anyone.