Help needed: Transition from SAS to PYTHON

[DeadWisdom]

"Alex  Pavluck" <apavluck at gmail.com> wrote in message news:<cgjilo$sit at odak26.prod.google.com>...
> Hello.  I am trying to teach myself PYTHON because I am interested in
> programming.  I use SAS all day and I really like the way you can
> highlight code and submit just that section or submit the entire
> program without having to save it.  Can you do this in PYTHON?  Also,
> does PYTHON (Windows) log errors?  It would be helpful when I am
> writting a program and I submit the code and it says that their is an
> error to know WHERE!  Once again this is another feature of SAS.  Have
> I just gotten too used to SAS or are there others out there that would
> also like to have this functionality??
> 
> Please help!
> 
> Alex

I'll do what I can to help...

Basically you have to learn a different paradigm of programming if you
are coming from SAS.  SAS is designed specially designed for
statistical analysis (although, and I speak of devils here, I have
heard that it is used for data manipulation).  Whereas Python is much
more command driven.

Now Python itself does not have this sort of highlight and submit
functionality, but neither does SAS, rather this was part of the
program you used to develop your SAS.  Python however, is interpreted
and interactive, which means that you don't have to save a program
that you write; and, yes; the syntax checker and compiler will tell
you were the errors are.  This will make more sense once you begin to
understand Python a bit better and have some experience with it.

I'd suggest picking up a beginning Python book that is easier for
people who are learning programming.  Search the archives of this
newsgroup and I'm sure you can find sundry recommendation on books. 
And download ActivePython
(http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActivePython/), which is a very
good beginning.