[Pythonmac-SIG] Mac User Python Newbies

[Troy Rollins]

On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 16:12:13 +0000, Michael Hudson <mwh at python.net> wrote:
> Troy Rollins <troy.rollins at gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > I for one, don't care to think of myself in the context of "begger",
> > but more so in the context of uninitiated contributor. If developers,
> > new to python, have a barrier to entry, they may well walk of to Ruby,
> > or Lua... etc. At some point, I'd like to be contributing to the
> > effort, but just getting off the ground is a bit daunting.
> 
> I may be missing details from earlier posts, but what is currently
> daunting you?  Have you looked at the Python tutorial or the PyObjC
> tutorial, to pick two simple examples?
> 

Well, I've transitioned between tools like Director, REALbasic, and
Revolution, and extremely quickly moved into creating non-trivial
applications. With Python, it is far less condusive to "playing" and
therefore seems to hold me somewhere around the print "hello world"
stage.

Yes, I've look at the cited examples... perhaps they simply didn't
connect with me on the right level. Python stuff always seems to be
written from the perspective of "ok, you are starting from a lower
level language", but many of us are probably coming from the other
direction – a higher level language... Lingo, REALbasic, etc. It would
seem to me that the transition to Python should be easy, but perhaps I
just haven't yet encountered the right materials.

I just received 3 books on Python from Amazon. Every one of them
starts with the line "this book does not teach you to program in
Python, and assumes you already know how to do that." Perhaps it is
just my own dumb luck, but that is the angle most web materials take
as well in my experience. OR, it is print "hello world".

I'm pretty committed to learning this, but I'm somewhat surprised at
how much productivity I have to throw away in order to do it. Many
would say "well, that's free software for you." But, I'm not
interested in the "free" part. Free is not what is important to me.
Frankly, I'd rather pay for something productive. My time is worth WAY
more than whatever a decent tool would cost. The part that interests
me is open source, and "future-proofing." To me, "free" translates to
"loss of productivity." I'm not a hobbyist, and I'm not looking to
Python as something to use "outside of my day job." I make my living
with tools like this, and have a staff that does as well.

Please don't interpret any of my comments as saying anything bad about
list members, contributors, or Python. That isn't the intent at all. I
do realize that these things take time, that Python is free and
open-source, and that only I am responsible for my ability to use it,
and choice to do so.

-- 
Troy Rollins
RPSystems, Ltd.
www.rpsystems.net