Myth: Python is ideal for beginners

[laotseu]

pedro alvarez wrote:
> 'Python is ideal for beginers'
> How many times have i seen that statement?
> Is python ideal for beginners?
> Upon close investigation and thinking, this is what i found out:
> 
> The majority of the python communities resources are geared towards
> attracting and absorbing refugees from other languages, not attracting
> fresh young converts.( i myself run away from c/c++)


(assuming from others posts in this thread that this is not a troll)
(and please pardon my poor english)

Even if it's actually changing, Python is still less 'exposed' to 
beginners than established or more commercially-marketed languages like 
C, C++ (for the first part) or Java, VB, C# (for the second part). It's 
also more known in the Linux/Unix/OpenSource world than in the Window 
World (there are actually a whole lot of senior Window programmers that 
just never heard of Python), and peoples running Linux or any UNIX are 
usually not absolute newbies, even if there not programmers.

> Going around the web, u see tutorials on advanced concepts like gui's,
> oop,
> web programming etc. U dont see many that teach basic concepts,
> because usually it is assumed the reader cut his teath using c++, java
> etc.

First point : the first tutorials I found about Python were stuff like 
"How to think like a computer scientist" (correct me if I mispelled it), 
which *is* an 'absolute newbie' tutorial (I whish I had found such docs 
when I tried to write my first Hypercard Stack).

Second point : the fact is that, in Python, GUI or web programming are 
not such complex and advanced concepts !-)

> Also, given pythons own flexibility and open endedness, a fresh
> programmer might need some guidance, cos it might be easy to get
> confused.

  Newbies *need* guidance, whatever the language.

> Granted, maybe in a university enviroment, with a lecturer giving
> guidance,
> it may be ideal.
> But is that how we all learned programming? No, most programmers as
> young children had access to pc's. Being curious, they wanted to
> tinker more.
> In my dos days, we used qbasic.
> And python is being recommended to those tinkerers.

Rightly so, IMHO

> I think freshers should rather be asked to start with c
A good way to disgust them. I do like C, but I had to try at least a 
dozen of times over a two year period before I managed to get into it.
I was just to confused by linking, object files and whatsoever, not to 
talk about pointers, memory management and the like (remember, I learned 
by myself with no one to teach me computer 'basics' and absolutely no 
technical background in this domain).

> or vb, 
Why do you hate newbies that much ?-)

> cos
> theres loads
> of information for beginners.

Informations for beginners in C ? You must be joking ?
And I dont clearly see what VB could give a beginner that Python cannot.

> Also, without having to deal with braces and memory leaks in c, or
> vb's verbosity how is he going to appreciate python?

Take an absolute newbie, teach him Python, and then VB. You can bet 
whatever you want the poor guy will be <yuck><censored> in a few hours.

> So, the conclusion is the python community at the moment is an ideal
> refugee shelter,and not a place for fresh recruits.
Compared with many other places, this newsgroup show more than a great 
tolerance to newbies, who can have the chance to be helped by seasonned 
pro - which is not the case in any VB forum I ever went thru.


> To further demonstrate, can u show me a prominent author who began his
> programming with python?(chuckle,chuckle)
> The only authors u see are example:
> 'George Python(or Osama Bin Python or Raj Python) was programming in
> fortran for
> 85 years before discovering python.'

See above on the first point, and you'll know why. I think this will 
have changed in a few years from now.

BTW, no one could have learned Python 85 years ago - except perhaps 
Guido, thanks to its time-machine !-)

Laotseu