Python has brought computer programming to a vast new audience

Post by webmaven » Sun, Jul 22, 2018, 12:27 PM UTC

timb07 wrote: post #183

qubax wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone else said this on HN: Python is the second best language in almost every field of computing. It isn't. Frankly, it isn't even top 3 in any "field of computing" depending on how you define "field of computing". What python has going for it is the evangelists who do a great job of spreading the word and of course funding - they have lots of money backing the language. Also, being an interpreted language, it h…

"My hope is that python will serve as a "gateway drug" to other languages like ruby, ML, C/C++, SQL" Your inclusion of SQL in that list really shows you have no idea what you're talking about.

Post by opnitro » Sun, Jul 22, 2018, 2:08 PM UTC

dorfsmay wrote: post #247

opnitro wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you'd like to go further along that path, and I'd really recommend trying to learn a lisp. How to Design Programs[0] is good gentle introduction if you're new to the ideas of lisp or functional programming, and SICP[1][2] is the old classic. [0] http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/index.html [1] http://web.mit.edu/alexmv/6.037/sicp.pdf [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Op3QLzMgSY&list=PLE18841CAB...

Which one though? I have looked at LISPs, but it's difficult to pick one to invest time in. Because I am so restricted on time I have to stick to languages which are used in the industry (so my fun has real-life ROI), which I think boils down to CL which is often touted as old-fashion and its market seems to shrink slowly, and Clojure which means the JVM and mainly Java libraries and high mem requirements. For pure f…

Post by alimw » Mon, Jul 23, 2018, 8:04 AM UTC

danso wrote: post #66

random_upvoter wrote: post #12

For me it's somewhat strange that it is universally presented as a beginner's language. Python would be hugely confusing to me if I didn't keep the underlying C model -- dynamically allocated objects with reference counts -- in mind at all time. Together with a lot of protocol that is largely arbitrary.

When teaching Python to beginners, I struggle with the concept of mutability -- e.g. `sorted(mylist) vs mylist.sort()` without being able to refer to the concepts of memory and references. But it's not a terrible obstacle if you drill in extra adherence to logic and testing and jumping into REPL. After enough trial-and-error with `x is y` `x == y` and `id(x)`, the abstract concept comes through without having to ackn…

Post by riazrizvi » Sat, Jul 28, 2018, 12:05 AM UTC

riazrizvi wrote: post #32

The thing I love most about the language is its conciseness, on several levels. It's syntactically concise because of its use of whitespace and indentation instead of curly braces. Expressions are often concise because of things like list slicing and list expressions. It can be linguistically concise, because it is so easy to fiddle with the data model of your classes, to customize their behavior at a deeper level. F…

    x = 100
    y = [x+i for i in range(2)]

    NameError: name 'x' is not defined

    x = 100
    y = (lambda x=x: [x+i for i in range(2)])()
    

    $ python -c "import IPython;IPython.embed()"

    $ ipython