Where do they tech Python officialy ?

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Omari Norman a écrit :
> On Mon, Jul 23, 2007 at 10:48:10PM -0700, Paul Rubin wrote:
>  
> 
>>If you're having trouble with Python because you're new at
>>programming, I can sympathize--I don't think it's the most
>>beginner-friendly of languages despite the efforts in that direction
>>by the designers.  
> 
> 
> Just curious--what language would you recommend as most
> beginner-friendly?

C ?-)

(sorry, just kidding.)

> My previous programming experience was with BASIC--and I think it is
> true that BASIC will, in many ways, rot your brain.

So will Java.

I learned programming with Hypertalk (MacIntosh's Hypercard scripting 
language, which more or less gave birth to AppleTalk), then RealBasic 
(Mac's Better VB-like), then VB, then Java, then C, then bits of Pascal, 
then Python, and this is where I started to see the light. But I had 
hard time unlearning all those java-ish anal-retentive stupidities and 
arbitrary overcomplexifications before I really enjoyed Python. Playing 
with Lisp (Common Lisp and Scheme) and Smalltalk helped getting rid of 
mental pollution wrt/ declarative static typing. To be honest, playing 
with Haskell and O'Caml also helped me understanding that static typing 
is not necessarily bad by itself.

> I had used QBasic
> and, later, a little VBA and some PHP. It took some time to unlearn some
> bad things (object orientation in VBA seems to be mostly a hack, for
> example, while PHP seems to be a big hack generally)

Well... this is not exactly a scoop !-)

> but it seems to me
> that Python helped me learn my first modern programming language.
> 
> 
>>I think Python is not used in university programs very much.  Look for
>>one that uses SICP (Scheme) or CTM (Mozart/Oz) or a functional
>>language like Haskell, in preference to the ones that use Java (the
>>Cobol of the 1990's).  With some reasonable experience in Scheme or
>>Mozart or Haskell, plus a Python manual, you'll be well on your way.
> 
> 
> I had heard of these languages, but learning them is a bit discouraging
> because (Java excepted) they don't seem to get much practical use.

Before considering practical use (FWIW, Python was pretty far from 
mainstream 7 year ago), you should ask yourself how learning one of 
these languages will affect the way you thing about programming. While 
mostly in the imperative/OO camp, Python stole quite a lot from 
functional languages, and this is obviously a GoodThing(tm).

My 2 cents