[Tutor] info, help, guidence,...

[Alan Gauld]

"jeff witt" <hopebassist at yahoo.com> wrote

> my brother (who is a programmer) guides me to ".net" languages,

OK, Python is a .NET language too.

> and i am not too sure why,

.NET is the new Microsoft standard and their counter attack on Java.
It offers a language neutral runtime environment that allows you to
write the GUI(user interface) in VB.Net, the database intrerface in
Managed C++ and the algorithms in C# and then link them all
together in a single program. That used to be very hard to do.
.NET offers some other bits too but thats the main advantage IMHO.
(Wikipedia is your friend for all things IT related - try looking up
.NET there)

> i like the little i know about python, it seems to be user friendly,
> however,  i am not finding clear answers about what it does
> compared to ".net" for example.

They are two different things. .NET is an environment for running
programs, rather like a virtual operating system, that runs on the
Windows platform. You can use multiple programming languages
within .NET, including Python.

> here are a few questions that go through my head...
> how does python get applied to a GUI?

Thee are several GUI toolkits, the standard one(ie comes with python)
is Tkinter which in turn is a Python wrapper around the long standing
Tc;/Tk GUI toolkit (Tk=Toolkit). But there are others including the
.NET GUI and Java GUIs(via Jython).

> why dont universities teach it?

Several do, and even more colleges and high schools.
Universities tend to prefer Java because it is more like classical
programming languages and enforces a stricter style of programming
which fits (arguably) better to the University curriculum.

> is there an online class i can take for it?

There are many online tutorials (including mine) and you will find
a list of links on the Python web site under the Non programmers
section.

> training certificates?

Not sure on that one, maybe...

> is it accepted in the world of programming professionally?

Yes there are many companies who use Python - see the python
web site for examples. Google is perhaps the best known but there
are plenty others. It falls under the general heading of scripting
languages and is considered to be on a par with Perl, Tcl, JavaScript,
Lisp and others.

> ( i am interested in a career too, as well as a new hobby),.

Several of the people on this list use Python in their day jobs.
And for some Python is their day job!

>  i use linux, and python seems to be everywhere for linux,..
> and i read that it works on windows too

Yes, Python workls on a multitude of platforms incliuding
the "big three": Unix, Windows, MacOS but also on VAX VMS,
MVS, and several more obscure OS.

> but is it accepted in "those" circles?

Yes, especially by the people who use it there! :-)

> what is pythons strengths and weaknesses,

It is a general purpose scripting language that is easy to learn
and easy to maintain and yet extensible and powerful. Read
the Python web site for a fuller story.

> IE. web/Internet, or program development, operating system
> things,...

I wouldn't write an OS nor anything too close to the hardware
(graphics driver say), but otherwise it can do all of those things
and if you read the archives of this group you will find relative
novices doing all of them.

> what would you (or you guys) recomend for the first language?

Python obviously! :-)

> or like my brother says, "just learn something and stop
> asking me questions"

And to some extent he is right. Once you learn any programming
language its relatively easy to convert to another. The hard bit is
the concepts involved in programming not the details of any
one language.

> if python was released in 1991 how long will it remain a current
> or a applicable language? or i guess i am asking, what is the
> normal life of a programming language before it is obsolete?

COBOL, Lisp, BASIC and ForTran were all invented before 1963
and are all still in regular use. Smalltalk started in 1973 and 
"finalised"
in 1980 and is still a highly influential language. C was invented in
the mid 70's and is still king of OS programming. Java was 1994(?)
and is the current "mainstream" leader.

But I could point to many languages which have come and gone
in the same period: CHILL, Coral, Snoball, PL/1, Modula2, Oberon.
You can still get tools for all of  these but the job market is
vanishingly small. Yet in their day all were mainstream or seen as
rising stars.

So how long depends on how good the language is, how well
it is marketed, and fashion amongst other factors.

> i am years from actually contributing to any open source
> project,

You probably could contribute as a tester or documentation
writer within a few weeks or months. You could be at the stage
of fixing bugs in less than a year. It depends on how much time
you commit...

HTH,


-- 
Alan Gauld
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld