What is different with Python ?

[Tom Anderson]

On Sun, 12 Jun 2005, Peter Hansen wrote:

> Andrea Griffini wrote:
>> On Sat, 11 Jun 2005 21:52:57 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I think new CS students have more than enough to learn with their 
>>> *first* language without having to discover the trials and 
>>> tribulations of memory management (or those other things that Python 
>>> hides so well).
>> 
>> I'm not sure that postponing learning what memory is, what a pointer is 
>> and others "bare metal" problems is a good idea. ... I think that for a 
>> programmer skipping the understanding of the implementation is just 
>> impossible: if you don't understand how a computer works you're going 
>> to write pretty silly programs.
>
> I won't say that I'm certain about any of this, but I have a very strong 
> suspicion that the *best* first step in learning programming is a program 
> very much like the following, which I'm pretty sure was mine:
>
> 10 FOR A=1 TO 10: PRINT"Peter is great!": END

10 PRINT "TOM IS ACE"
20 GOTO 10

The first line varies, but i suspect the line "20 GOTO 10" figures 
prominently in the early history of a great many programmers.

> More importantly by far, *I made the computer do something*.

Bingo. When you realise you can make the computer do things, it 
fundamentally changes your relationship with it, and that's the beginning 
of thinking like a programmer.

tom

-- 
Think logical, act incremental