Question about learning Python

[Chris Angelico]

On Thu, 8 Sept 2022 at 05:09, Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2022-09-07, Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, 8 Sept 2022 at 04:54, Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> If you're a beginning programmer, then IMO learning C first is
> >> probably detrimental. [...]
> >
> > Not as detrimental as starting with BASIC, and then moving on to x86
> > assembly language, and trying to massage the two together using CALL
> > ABSOLUTE in order to get mouse input in your GW-BASIC programs.
>
> Ah the "good old days".
>

Indeed. The 1990s gave me all manner of skills, including the
aforementioned mouse control in a BASIC program, writing a
Terminate-and-Stay-Resident program that hooks an interrupt, tricks
for *not* writing a TSR and still acting like one, building GUIs using
pixel precision, building GUIs using pixel precision but fully
automatically, using HTML tables to create layouts.... oh, yes, so
many skills... To anyone suffering from https://xkcd.com/1479/ right
now, I can assure you, quite a lot of that knowledge DOES eventually
become obsolete when better methods come along. It just sometimes
takes a decade or more.

(And then occasionally it still haunts you. I'm finding table-based
layouts in a site that I now have to manage. Eventually I'll fix it
all, eventually....)

ChrisA