Is Python for me?

[Martijn Faassen]

DvdAvins <dvdavins at aol.com> wrote:
[snip]
> I do have programming experience, but the vast majority of my work has been
> LotusScript (an OO variant of VB) or Domino/Notes's @Formula language
> (which has lovely list operations and can *almost* be made to behave like a
> real language, despite its total lack of a looping/iteration construct).
> I've also written production code in Javascript and Sybase's stored
> procedure language (T-SQL is the name, if I remember right). On top of that,
> I fiddled around a little in Java recently and C, Fortran, and Pascal
> in the distant past.

Given this background, Python would be among the languages easiest to
learn for you. It's a breath of fresh air to step away from application
specific scripting languages to a general one, I imagine, and it's still
far higher level than Java, and definitely C, Fortran or Pascal. If you're
interested in object oriented programming techniques Python is a very
nice language to help learn about them as well. Given your background 
Python may also be intereresting if you want to learn about how to
scale your applications up to larger sizes, while you still don't lose
easy integration abilities with all kinds of external systems (databases,
GUI toolkits, etc).

> But the point here is to use something I'm *not* familiar with and something
> that will help me think in new ways.

I imagine there will be enough to learn that you're not familiar with in
Python. But if this is really a big goal of yours then a functional language
may be more suitable. Python has some properties of functional languages
but is not really one itself. 

> The project is a non-animated game. To a less technical audience, I'd say
> "non-graphical", but I will use a GUI. The game will rely on an extensive
> database of actual historical information, but that database will be
> updatable and even replacable by the user.

> Therefor I imagine I'll use CSVs rather than write
> a custom import/export interface. I don't think I'll need the performance of an
> RDBMS.

If you're interested in learning new things, you could also look into
the Zope Object Database that you can use with Python, or just the
plain 'pickle' module that comes with the Python standard library.

> Incidentally, there are similar programs out there now, but they rely on
> proprietary data formats. My innovation would be to sell people the game
> without making them have to pay me to update the data.

Makes me curious about what the game could be. Historical information?

> The first iteration of the game will be, as you say, a cross-platform GUI
> application, but there is also a market for a web-based version.

Python is good at glueing all kinds of components together, probably
better than most of the other languages you're looking at. So if this is
a criterion you should look at Python.

Regards,

Martijn 
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?