another beginner sort of question

[John Salerno]

Thanks!

Mike Meyer wrote:
> John Salerno <johnjsal at NOSPAMgmail.com> writes:
> [Wants to learn C# and Python simultaneously.]
> 
>>So my question is, is this feasible?
> 
> 
> Should be. It might be faster to do them sequentually.
> 
> 
>>Or does learning Python require (or entail) learning all the details
>>behind it?
> 
> 
> Not really. There are some traps you can fall into that are obvious if
> you know how the underlying implementation works, but even for those,
> you just need the general idea, not the details.
> 
> 
>>Also, do I need to know anything about C or C++?
> 
> 
> No. In fact, the less you know about them, the less you'll have to
> unlearn to use Python effectively.
> 
> 
>>Python seems to connected to those languages that I'm afraid
>>learning Python by itself might not be practical, but hopefully
>>that's unfounded.
> 
> 
> CPython (the implementation most people mean when they say "Python")
> is written in C, and has well-defined APIs for putting an interpreter
> into a C program, or making functionality from a C library available
> to a CPython program. Other implementations have similar hooks for
> different languages. Unless you want to get into the internals of an
> implementation, to embed Python in an application, or to write a
> Python extension (usually because you're wrapping an existing
> library), you won't need to worry about any of these.
> 
> One thing. While Python is called a "scripting language", it doesn't
> have facilities for dealing with shell scripting that other "scripting
> languages" have. As such, it's harder to do shell scripting type
> things in Python than in those languages. On the other hand, it's
> easier than doing them in C, for the same reason that doing pretty
> much anything in Python is easier than doing it in C. On the gripping
> hand, if you do things pythonically instead of like you'd do them in a
> shell script, you may find that Python is easier than the shell
> script.
> 
>         <mike