Interpretation

[Ben Finney]

"Mario R. Osorio" <nimbiotics at gmail.com> writes:

> On Saturday, March 26, 2016 at 5:59:04 AM UTC-4, Dennis Ngeno wrote:
> > My programs have never combile, they keep telling me , systax error even
> > after copy pasting
>
> No pun intended, but I hope you are not typing your code like you
> typed your message.

Many people don't have English as a first language, or are otherwise
impaired from typing English text.

The issue is important though, Dennis: communication is at the core of
programming. You'll need to take care with what you write in your code,
and in your messages; both are communications and clear writing is very
helpful.

> OTOH, python code is not supposed to be compiled.

That's simply untrue: Python code is compiled every day on countless
machines. It is compiled to various formats, but the process is none the
less compilation.

Don't make the mistake of a narrow definition of “compile” which is
unhelpful in modern languages like Python.

> Another tip: If you really are copying and pasting, I'd recommend you
> first paste the code to the text editor of your like and MAKE SURE YOU
> ARE NOT MIXING SPACES AND TAB CHARACTERS FOR INDENTATION PURPOSES.

Dennis, you should choose a text editor that handles program code well.
A “word processor” program makes different trade-offs, altering text in
a way that is not helpful for writing program code.

For an overview of the range of programmer's text editors, see
<URL:https://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonEditors>. To start with you can
use the “IDLE” development environment that comes installed with Python.

-- 
 \      “Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be |
  `\                                         happy.” —Henry L. Mencken |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney