<p>I had my first intro to Python last week in a physics lab, and would like to get into it more. There seem to be some significant differences between Python 2 and 3. Can anyone offer any opinion about which is most popular at most campuses and/or in industry for general engineering-related uses? I suppose Python 3 will eventually win out, but are a lot of places still using code written in Python 2? I plan to ask locally, but was curious about the national norm on this.</p>
<p>First off, good on you for taking a python class. I think it is the perfect language for engineers to learn (that won’t be doing primarily programming).</p>
<p>I decided to go with Python 3. The only big downside is the possibility of running into a module that hasn’t been translated to Python 3 just yet. I’ve only run into that once with a package that interfaced with Excel.</p>
<p>@noleguy33 Thanks. From everything I can see online in the world at large, there are a lot of people encouraging Python 3, but also a lot still using Python 2. One of the computer engineering guys at my campus just posted a code snippet on Facebook which was pretty clearly Python 3 syntax (indicated by the print statement), but I get the impression that physics labs here are working with software a few years old written in Python 2. I guess on general principle I’ll start on Python 3, and adapt as necessary.</p>