Python is fun (useless social thread) ;-)

[Mirco Wahab]

Thus spoke John Salerno (on 2006-06-15 15:50):

> Did you have to learn it for a job?

No, I was just interested in things
that are found interesting ;-)

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

I read some remarks, from "both sides", on
the feasibility of a programming language
with 'invisible braces', so I thought
'give it a try'.

> 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)

Good question: I started with 'Myghty', this is,
as you probably know, a (imho excellent) framework
for developing web applications from components.

'Myghty' is a almost complete port of Perl's 'Mason'
(which is what Amazon and others run at), - what I
knew already smoehow.

I also tried Pylons (base component of MVC system
for web apps), but waved the flag after some time.

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

Another motivation was to find out something about the
(nowadays) huge amount on SciPy related (software
(http://www.scipy.org/Topical_Software).

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

I came all the way up from Basic/Fortran/x86-Assembler/C/C++
to todays 'lightweight languages' (Dr.Dobbs says they are)
in the the Python/Perl/Ruby-Group.

For my personal taste(!), Python is in the end
'to unspectacular', means: I didn't manage to
learn to be really expressive in it - and to
enjoy that ;-)

But thats a matter of taste, these languages are like
weapons (tools), that you use to express yourself on
the battlefield of your tasks.

And you _have_ to love and praise your sword, otherwise
you won't be able to handle it appropriate - in your
dreadful encounters ...

> Additional comments/complains here:   :)

What I don't like in Python
- easy things are too easy (even beginners can handle that, PIL etc.),
- complicated things are too complicated (I had hard times to remember things),
- invisible braces ;-) (just personal taste)
- no integrated regex support (used to use re's very much, but milage my vary)

Regards

Mirco