[Tutor] Did you learn to program with Python???

[David Mccowan]

On Fri, 25 Oct 2002 13:51:42 +0200
Magnus Lycka <magnus@thinkware.se> wrote:

I fist did some very minor programming in basic, when I was in the
6th/7th grade.  I did not like it, and after that I really stoped.

Then, in my senior year in high school my girlfreind talked me in to
taking an APCS class, and at that time the test was on C++ (I think it
is based on java now).  I did extreemly well in that considering the
theacher and the enviorenement most likely due to my ability to seek
outside source for information, and my ability to stand very bad
documentation.  But I never like C++.

Then during spring break I discovered python and wrote a 3d Tic Tac Toe
program that week.  And that was with just using the tutorial for
documentation.

Then in college I discovered lisp, and scheme, and even though I like
lisp better, do to time contraints, and the difference in
lisp based languages compared with c style programs, python is still the
only language I have ever solved any majorly complexed tasks in.

I still do a significant amount of programming in python.  As far as
documentation is concerned, the standard documentation that comes with
python is the best I have seen as far as languages are concerned (I am
comparing this to my experience with Java, C++, Perl, Scheme, Lisp, and
C, your experience my be different). The documentation is so good, that
I will most likely never by a python book except for the only one I have
now (Python and Tkinter Programming, which documentation was seriously
lacking when I started programming in Python).

In relation to objects, I really did not understand the significance of
abstraction until I sudied lisp.  But I can say that implementing
classes and objects in python is really easy.

My only complaint is that python does not support recursion very well,
although I am comparing this with lisp which is designed to do recursion
very well.  Despite the fact that I seem to think recursively, this is
not a major issure becuase I can easy implement recursive like systems
with loops.


> We only learn to program from the very beginning once...
> I started learning with BASIC on Apple ][ many years ago.
> 
> I was a fairly experienced programmer when I first met
> Python. I have this idea that Python is a good language
> for beginners, but obviously I can't say that from any
> first hand experience.
> 
> (I do believe that it was with Python I really learned
> how to use objects though...)
> 
> Are there any people on this mailing list for whom Python
> was the first programming language, or perhaps even better,
> not the first they tried, but the first that worked? :)
> (Are there any counter examples?)
> 
> How did you learn Python?
> 
> What resource was most helpful?
> 
> Some book?
> 
> Some tutorial on the web?
> 
> Some mailing list or IRC channel etc?
> 
> Some person near you?
> 
> Something else?
> 
> As experienced programmers, we can look at different
> tutorials and form an opinion about their usefulness,
> but it's really difficult to see something with the
> eyes of a beginner when you have years of python
> experience... I mean: I can see if a tutorial is correct,
> and in some sense well written, but I can't really see
> how helpful it would be for a complete newbie...
> 
> Obviously, we're all slightly different... Both in the
> way we approach problems and in what previous experience
> we have. I don't think there is one way of learning to
> program that fits everybody, but real world experiences
> would still be interesting.
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Magnus Lyckå, Thinkware AB
> Älvans väg 99, SE-907 50 UMEÅ
> tel: 070-582 80 65, fax: 070-612 80 65
> http://www.thinkware.se/  mailto:magnus@thinkware.se
> 
> 
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