[Tutor] Re: Novice programming errors

[Andrei]

Jonathan Hayward wrote on Fri, 20 Aug 2004 17:02:51 -0500:

> I'm doing some research and would like to get a feel for common novice 
> errors. I'm interested both in syntax errors that cause compilation 

There's a bunch of pages discussing common errors:

http://zephyrfalcon.org/labs/python_pitfalls.html
http://www.amk.ca/python/writing/warts.html
http://www.ferg.org/projects/python_gotchas.html
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/python/2004/02/05/learn_python.html

> errors, and things like division by zero or key errors. To new 
> programmers especially, could you give me specific examples of errors 
> you've struggled with?

I'm by now not *that* new to Python, but things that I had trouble with
include:

- integer division (4/3 returning 1 -> will be fixed and from __future__
import division fixes it already)
- the join string method seems weird at first (would expect it to be a
sequence method)
- a = [1,2,3]; a[2] = a -> didn't understand why a[2] looked so weird. BTW,
this was before I'd actually worked through a complete tutorial.

I've also been bitten quite hard by Unicode stuff, but I don't think that's
a Python problem (nor a newbie problem).

Never had some other typical newbie problems, like indentation errors.

-- 
Yours,

Andrei

=====
Real contact info (decode with rot13):
cebwrpg5 at jnanqbb.ay. Fcnz-serr! Cyrnfr qb abg hfr va choyvp cbfgf. V ernq
gur yvfg, fb gurer'f ab arrq gb PP.