A beginning beginner's question about input, output and . . .

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 7:41 AM DonK <don81846 at comcast.net.removeme> wrote:
>
>
> Hi, I'm thinking about learning Python but I'm 74 years old and will
> very likely not ever have a programming job again. I used to program
> in Visual Basic, C\C++, Delphi, etc. and some obscure "mainframe"
> languages. It's been about 18-19 years since my last programming job.
> I do understand programming concepts but I'm really not up on any of
> the more modern programming languages.
>
> I've installed Python 3.7, the PyCharm IDE and watched some Youtube
> tutorials but it's been stretched out over about 1.5 years so I'll
> probably need to go back to the beginning. My problem is that I don't
> understand how Python programs are used. (i.e user input and output)
> Is Python mainly used for backends?
>

Python is used in many different ways. I'd recommend focusing first on
the simple console input and output, which are available as the
input() and print() built-in functions; those are sufficient for a
vast majority of situations. Beyond that, you run into what's best
described as "inherent complexity"; building a good user interface is,
by its nature, not simple.

If it's easier, you can look into using a web browser as your user
interface. Python is superb at building web servers and web
applications, so you can easily design your app so the user interacts
with it using a very simple browser-based front end - either with
JavaScript or as a really easy form fill-out.

ChrisA