New to programming Python 2.7 vs Python 3.0 futureproof and IDE suggestions?

If you are completely starting from scratch, I think you should go with python 3.x as it is the language's future. If you have a large code base to work with which uses python 2.x, learn python 2.7. The advantage of learning python 2.7 is that there are lots of books around there for python 2.7 and it's already installed in Mac OS X(On the other hand you would have to install python 3.x from http://python.org to start working with it.) Even though python 3.x is backward incompatible with python 2.x, there are not really earth shattering differences. If you learn one, learning the other should be easy. For IDE, me and some of my friends use emacs editor. An emacs editor is installed inside the mac but it can only be used inside the terminal. You can install emacs for mac at http://aquamacs.org. This editor has a somewhat steep learning curve but if you master it, it will make you very productive. For more discussion on python 2 vs python 3, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3413654 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/170921/should-i-learn-python-2-before-3-or-start-directly-from-python-3 For more discussions on IDE see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/81584/what-ide-to-use-for-python

I would suggest that you go with python 2.7 as you can find more books and support for it than python 3.0. Also if you are planning to perform data analysis using python then you must stick to the 2.7 version. As far as the question for which IDE you should use you can refer to the link below. I found it quite useful. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/81584/what-ide-to-use-for-python Hope this helps!!!