age of Python programmers

[Egbert Bouwman]

On Thu, Aug 19, 2004 at 06:49:30AM +0100, Ben Last wrote:

> I think the slowing down of the brain due to ageing is compensated for by
> the increase in experience (one makes fewer of the same mistakes again) and
> learning in how to learn :)

I suppose you are right. It is our last resort.
But I am constantly amazed, not only by the number of tools 
and the conceptual difficulty of these tools
that the younger programmers seem to have mastered, 
but also by the wise lessons they derive from living with them.
It was a bit of a surprise that my last teacher, Christopher King,
is sub-twenty (which is very young).

For the elder programmers Python is a godsend.
More than any other language I have used, it helps you to manage 
complexity, and to think about your problem instead of the bytes.

I think the main factors here are:
- the syntax: indentation instead of braces in space.
  My programs look exactly like the pseudocode I used to write.
- high-level constructs where you need them; for me one of them is 
  the ease with which you transform sequences into files, and vice versa.
- the simplicity of handling classes, objects, once you know the basics.
  Thanks to Python thinking with classes has become a way of life.
  It rescued me from the Fortran-PL/I-C-Perl noodle-soup.
egbert
-- 
Egbert Bouwman - Keizersgracht 197 II - 1016 DS  Amsterdam - 020 6257991
========================================================================