Python 1.6 or Python 2.0. Which One to Choose?
For those of you who wonder what was the reason to launch version 1.6 when the 2.0 was about to be released, I can explain:
When Guido and his team decided to leave CNRI, that institution asked for a 1.6 release to be created. That release would have to contain all the Python code that was designed while the team was still working at CNRI.
Although a lot of changes were incorporated to version 2.0, version 1.6 is forward-compatible with Python 2.0. Note that both releases, 1.6final and 2.0beta1, were released on the same day (September 5, 2000).