Overwhelmed by the Simplicity of Python. Any Recommendation?

[Rhodri James]

On 12/10/18 17:12, Rob Gaddi wrote:
> On 10/11/2018 11:29 PM, Kaan Taze wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> Since this is my first post to mail-list I'm kind of hesitant to ask this
>> question here but as many of you spend years working with Python maybe 
>> some
>> of you can guide me.
>>
>> What I trouble with is not a logical error that exist on a program I 
>> wrote.
>> It's the Python itself. Well, I'm 22 years old CS student -from 
>> Turkey- and
>> what they showed us at university was C Language and Java but I mainly 
>> use
>> C in school projects etc. So it's been few months that I started to use
>> Python for my personal side-projects. There are lots of resources to 
>> learn
>> language. I do what I need to do with Python too but I was kinda shocked
>> when I solve Python questions at Hackerrank. Even with list 
>> comprehensions
>> you can implement in very smart way to get things done and easy.
>> Iterations, string operations. The codes I see on the Internet using 
>> basics
>> in a very clever way which I couldn't come up with the same solution if I
>> tried to for some time. I do understand this ways but coming from ANSI C
>> makes it hard to see this flexibility. I probably do things in a both
>> inefficient and hard way in my projects.
>>
>> How do I get used to this? Is this just another "practice, practice,
>> practice" situation? Anything you can recommend?
>>
>>
>> All the best.
>>
>> Kaan.
>>
> 
> A) Yes, it's practice practice practice.
> 
> B) Don't get hung up on finding the clever solution.  Comprehensions and 
> generators and lots of other things are great under some circumstances 
> for making the code clearer and easier to read, but they too can become 
> the hammer that makes everything look like a nail.  The most important 
> thing is that your code is logical, clean, and easy to understand.  If 
> it doesn't take full advantage of the language features, or if the 
> performance isn't optimized to within an inch of its life, well so be it.

I completely agree.  I too have come from a background in C, and still 
do most of my day job in C or assembler.  It took a while before I was 
writing idiomatic Python, never mind efficient Python (arguably I still 
don't, but as Rob says, who cares?).  Don't worry about it; at some 
point you will discover that the "obvious" Python you are writing looks 
a lot like the code you are looking at now and thinking "that's really 
clever, I'll never be able to to that."

-- 
Rhodri James *-* Kynesim Ltd