Newbie to python --- why should i learn !

[Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch]

On Thu, 08 May 2008 15:49:01 +0200, pistacchio wrote:

> Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch ha scritto:
>> On Thu, 08 May 2008 04:17:01 -0700, s0suk3 wrote:
>> 
>>> Are you a newbie to Python, or to programming in general? I'll assume
>>> you are a newbie to programming in general because of that last
>>> question you asked. Things in Python are easier than in almost any
>>> other programming language. Here are three Hello World programs:
>> 
>> Counterexamples for quite short "greetings" in other programming languages:
>> 
>> (Free)BASIC::
>> 
>>   Print "Hello World!"
> 
> freebasic is another language i'd point out to a newbie, even if it is 
> not as multiplatform as python if. it has a decent community and a large 
> amount of libraries. it doesn't let you explore functional or, worse, 
> object oriented programming nor you can write server side programs with
> it.

OOP support is under development and why can't you write "server side
programs" in it?  CGI is possible.

> The others are examples of easy "hello world" languages, but, passed
> that, i think they don't have the same capabilities of python on terms
> of support, kind of programs you can write and even overall complexity
> (haskell forces you to functional programming, io is really a minor
> language, ocalm forces you to di OOP and, if writing hello world is
> simple, on the other hand ir may have lines of code that read like:
> 
> | [] -> []

Okay, Haskell's pure functional approach feels somewhat "weird".

Io is a minor language but a quite nice one IMHO.  Simple syntax and
relatively simple semantics but very powerful.

OCaml doesn't enforce OOP.  It's some kind of "mirror" of Python.  Python
is an OOP language with support for functional programming, and OCaml is a
functional language with support for OOP.

The biggest pro for Python among the easy and clear syntax languages is
the standard library and the amount of third party modules.

Ciao,
	Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch