Just one week shy of Christmas 2008, the Python world saw the release of version 3 of Python. Big deal, eh? Well ... it turns out it was and is, as Python 3 is the first major release of Python designed from the get-go to be incompatible with prior versions of the language.

Python 2.7 (powerful dynamic programming language that is used in a wide variety of application domains) is scheduled to be the last major version in the 2.x series before it moves into an extended maintenance period.

Typically, each new version of the Python programming language has been gentle on users, more or less maintaining backward compatibility with previous versions.

"The 3.0 version of Python (also known as Python3k and Python3000) just got released few hours ago. It's the first ever intentionally backwards-incompatible Python release."

Python 3000 (a.k.a. "Py3k", and released as Python 3.0) is a new version of the language that is incompatible with the 2.x line of releases. The language is mostly the same, but many details, especially how built-in objects like dictionaries and strings work, have changed considerably, and a lot of deprecated features have finally been removed.

Python is a great programming language and one of the easiest to learn. That doesn't mean that it isn't capable of powerful stuff, however, because Python is known to handle almost every kind of programming task quite well. From basic scripting to enhanced graphical 3D programs: Python can do it all.

Python is a very popular interpreted scripting language. C is a very popular compiled language. Due to its compiled nature, C is generally faster than Python, but is lower-level, making Python programming quicker and easier than C programming.

"Guido just released Python 3.0 alpha 2, to be downloaded at the usual locations -- get it and check it out! ..."

Python 3.0a2 Release: December 7th, 2007
http://www.python.org/download/releases/3.0/

"Python is an interpreted programming language created by Guido van Rossum in 1990. Python is fully dynamically typed and uses automatic memory management; it is thus similar to Perl, Ruby, Scheme, Smalltalk, and Tcl. Python is developed as an open source project, managed by the non-profit Python Software Foundation..."