age of new pythonistas [was: The Editor Poll results are in!]

[Alan Winston]

> it'd also be cool to see the relative age of new pythonistas -- I suspect
> that they're young, but this is completely unfounded.

51 here.

I happily switched to Algol as my programming language of choice about 1967,
seeing its major advantages over the Fortran and assembler ("mnemonic
plague") I had been using previously. I've happily (occasionally less
happily) learned and used many, many other languages in the intervening
years. My only real problem with Python is that I should have taken a closer
look at it years ago, instead of just writing it off as "yet another Unix
scripting language."

Now if you mean folks who will ONLY code in Python, them folks have gotta be
young. And it is quite possible that old hat Unixers who had long since
become comfortable with Perl aren't as likely to change.

But I hope that among those of us for whom Unix was just one more operating
system when it came along (albeit better than most), a little more
flexibility obtains. (I think Unix was about my tenth OS, I do vaguely
remember that MSDOS was either my 20th or 21st and that IBSYS was my first.
I had a calico cat that I named IBSYS.)

At this point I doubt I could name even half the languages I have programmed
in (I do remember that Focal followed C -- I may be unique in that).
Languages are tools. Learning a new language should be a routine part of
maintaining one's acumen as a programmer. Cf. Hunt & Thomas, _The Pragmatic
Programmer_, p12: "Learn at least one new language every year."

Python is now my primary language of choice. I recommend it to other
programmers. I have been assuming that that might make me a Pythonista.

But if being a Pythonista means refusing to program in anything but Python,
then yes, those folks are probably young. Very young. Another respondent
indicated that there aren't a lot of job openings out there for Python
programmers. Yes, I suspect that if you answer "What do you program in?"
with "Python," that that will indeed hurt you. But if you answer "C++, C,
Java, of course, some other languages, but I prefer Python since it is so
much more cost-effective," I would expect the interview to go well.


Alan Winston
Seattle