"Learning Curves" sounds like the title of the O'Reilly beginner's guide to soft porn, but that's not what this is about. I'm writing my first Python program. It is quite the adventure, and I'm learning a lot about learning (always good).
Things I have learned include, in no particular order:
f = StringIO()won't work. You need to use StringIO.StringIO() or you get a message about not being able to call a class as function. Twitch, twitch. Fortunately, the nice people on #python were able to set me straight.
It's been fun to do something new, though I'd have found it quicker to just port the library I wanted (the Universal Feed Parser) to Perl than to learn the Python I need around that library. That's okay, I'm doing this to learn another language and not to get the job done in the shortest possible time.
--Nat
Re:omg
gnat on 2005-11-05T00:10:00
Rumours of my life are greatly exaggerated:-)
Re:Talking about pythons indeed.
gnat on 2005-11-05T00:12:10
Nope, only hard core. "Nutsacks in a Nutshell", I believe is the working title.What book would Learning Curves be?
n1vux on 2005-11-05T00:23:51
I thought Learning Curves would be ORA's intro to graphic programming with Splines, possibly part of the Learning ePiX series.Re the question
So does this mean ORA isn't doing an into to soft pr0n?
the covers are getting racier since they branched out. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/jds/index.html http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linuxckbk/index.html http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/1933097043/index.htmlI'm just surprised the SELinux books don't have a Bondage & Discipline cover theme.
<EOJ/>Re:What book would Learning Curves be?
gnat on 2005-11-05T00:31:54
Hoop skirts are racy? Wow, my first Amish Perl coder! (other than Ziggy, of course)
--Nat
Re:What book would Learning Curves be?
ziggy on 2005-11-07T17:18:38
Sorry, dude. I've been clean shaven for years now.;-) Re:What book would Learning Curves be?
gnat on 2005-11-07T18:50:43
I need to get my ass to PyCon so I can see you again:-) Re:What book would Learning Curves be?
ziggy on 2005-11-07T20:04:02
Don't bother. It's going to be in Dallas next year. I stopped by one year or two because it was local, and I wasn't doing anything important that day.;-) Beards and racy
n1vux on 2005-11-07T18:08:51
Hoop skirts are racy? Wow, my first Amish Perl coder!No, merely ironic.
But one of the three links wasn't Prairie folk
... one had decolletage! Some locals might think your comment prescient, as the latest adjustment to my beard does evoke some Amish comments (especially with a summer straw hat) from those who don't know what Amish beards really look like (ear-to-ear jaw-fringe). It's really more old Yankee (chin cover); consider the linked picture (which matches what you probably don't remember seeing at LinuxWorld Boston ORA booth just before close of show) and subtract the mustache. New look not online yet, that I know of.
There are a couple of real issues with indentation, but mostly in Python's favor.
Indentation without line noise is a major convenience for those typing with their voice or quite possibly other adaptive technologies.
Indentation without line-noise lacks the redundancy that braces and a "tidy" reformatter can provide, but gets a similar effect directly. Editors that have been trained to match brackets may have a harder time skipping back to the top of the loop or block, although the eye can do it easier if it is on page. At least the lack of redundancy avoids the infuriating "missing close-bracket and die" message. (Having had PL/C systems try to repair syntactically flawed programs to ill result, I don't really wish Perl would insert the missing } for free, as Internet Exploder does with malformed HTML. But it still is annoying.)
Most tellingly, the Ubuntu team feels the simpler visually obvious syntactic indenting is a major feature of making the language end-user friendly, which is why they've selected Python and not GAMBAS or Perl or Ruby or BASH as the single scripting, install, and extension language for Ubuntu. See long essay which this comment reminded me to make.
Re:Python *shudder*
gnat on 2005-11-05T00:23:50
the eye can do it easier if it is on page.Not these eyes, alas. It was messing me up bigtime when I closed a bunch of blocks at once (if in a loop in a loop). No doubt I'll get used to it, but don't make the mistake of confusing familiar for intuitive. Nothing about these infernal machines is actually intuitive, and eyes can no doubt learn to see the invisible indents the same way that fingers can learn to hit the match-curly key sequence.
Most tellingly, the Ubuntu team feels the simpler visually obvious syntactic indenting is a major feature of making the language end-user friendly, which is why they've selected Python and not GAMBAS or Perl or Ruby or BASH as the single scripting, install, and extension language for Ubuntu.
That's nice for the Ubuntu folks, but I remain skeptical that Python is any better than Perl or Ruby in the newbie department. I've had new programmers revel in Perl the same way I've seen new programmers revel in Python. I believe firmly that diversity and not uniformity is good for software development: Perl, Ruby, Java, etc. won't just wither away to be historical footnotes to the almighty conquest of Python. Regardless of who is behind Ubuntu and how well they've done, people are different and prefer different things.
I say this because in the late 90s we were agitating against the spread of Java. And the Java bubble burst in 2001. Perl's bubble burst with PHP 3 (or was it 4?). Python's bubble will burst, too.
--Nat
Re:Python *shudder*
Ian Bicking on 2005-11-08T22:14:04
As a new programmer I revelled in QBasic, but it doesn't meant that was a good language. Programming is fun, people can enjoy it in nearly any language. Maybe not COBOL... submitting batch jobs isn't satisfying. But all languages that aren't soul-eating are fun.I've had new programmers revel in Perl the same way I've seen new programmers revel in Python.But new users aren't all equally successful in what they are trying to do. Moreso, they don't even know how to judge their success; they don't have a good feeling for how hard a problem really is, or for the quality of the thing they produce. Which is just to say that self-evaluation is not a good way to judge.
Re:CPAN?
gnat on 2005-11-07T18:44:00
You misunderstand me. Sadly there is no port of Universal Parser--I did my coding in Python because of this. Sorry!
When you close a block in emacs's python-mode, it briefly reports the text at the top of the block being closed. You may find this helpful for keeping track.
