Python is fun (useless social thread) ;-)

[André]

John Salerno wrote:
> So out of curiosity, I'm just wondering how everyone else came to learn
> it. If you feel like responding, I'll ask my questions for easy quoting:
>
> Did you have to learn it for a job?

No.  My job is purely administrative; I have absolutely no need to do
any programming.  I had done a *small* amount of programming (fortran,
C)  while studying Physics and wrote a few simple Java applets while
teaching Physics.

>
> Or did you just like what you saw and decided to learn it for fun?

More or less. In the summer of 2004 I felt I needed a hobby.  I also
thought I should introduce my kids to something useful about computers.
 I decided to combine both goals.
I started writing an html tutorial for my kids and, while surfing the
net for helpful resources, saw a few independent references to Python.
Curious, I downloaded it just to see what it was like and, after trying
a few things, I decided to forget about the html tutorial and proceeded
to write one on Python for my kids, following more or less a
traditional (boring) approach.

> Also, how did you go about learning it? (i.e., like I described above, I
> started with the main stuff then moved on to the different available
> frameworks)

Having taught Physics for a number of years, I realised that the best
way to learn something is try to prepare to teach it to someone else.
This is what I was trying to do for my kids. But, after spending a
little over a month with Python, I stumbled upon Guido van Robot which
inspired me to change course again and I started working on RUR-PLE.  I
had some ideas as to what RUR-PLE should look like, and just started
building from scratch, first implementing the logic (no GUI) and then
learning what I needed (like wxPython) as I went along.   Being a
newbie sometimes made it difficult to make things work the way I
thought they should.  I'm sure professional programmers/experts would
be horrified if they were to look at the details of the code I wrote.
My excuse: it works ... why break it? ;-)

> Was there any necessity in the specifics you learned, or did you just
> dabble in something (e.g. wxPython) for fun?

Driven by the final goal in mind... The whole adventure has been for
fun!

> Are there still some things you feel you need to learn or improve?

*Lots*.  At the moment, it is webserver stuff for another project
(Crunchy Frog), again designed to make teaching/learning Python more
fun.

> Additional comments/complains here:   :)

Programming in Python is fantastic as a hobby... when I can find the
time.  Since I started 2 years ago, I have gone for a few weeks (and
once for 4 months) at a time without doing any programming.  However,
it is always easy to get back at it.  I don't think I'd be able to say
that with other languages.

I have found members of the Python community to be generally extremely
helpful and generous of their time, in answering my silly questions.

I sometimes wish I had a different job, one which required me to do
programming using Python.

André