[CoLoCo] Noob programing, Python and me (and you too)

[Neal McBurnett]

I'll second this.  Python is one of the cleanest languages around,
designed with lots of thought to being easy for beginners and powerful
for experts.  There is an amazing range of modules to do everything
you're likely to want to do.  It is one of the main programming
languages in the Ubuntu community and has lots of support in the
scientific computing community, so you'll see it all over.  Ruby
support in Ubuntu is more complicated, due to some conflicts between
Ruby's internal packaging and Ubuntu packaging.

The Django web framework is indeed great, though not a good place for
a beginner to start off, since it is also "industrial strength", with
a bit of a steep learning curve.

The "tutor" email list (tutor at python.org) is a great place to get
python help from friendly experts.  There are also free books online,
like "Dive Into Python"

 http://diveintopython.org/toc/index.html

Another great option is Javascript, which is available in any web
browser, including smart phones.  It continues to grow in influence
and is now very fast by the standards of scripting languages, being
used in web server applications (see the Joyent Smart Platform) and
stand-alone.

Performance comparison:
 http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32q/which-programming-languages-are-fastest.php?gpp=on&java=on&scala=on&ocaml=on&v8=on&lua=on&python=on&jruby=on&calc=chart

If you want to get cool and exotic try Haskell or Ocaml or Lua.

Perl is the oldest and cruftiest of the lot, available many places
(though not in phones), but much harder to read than the others.

I agree that scripting languages are the way to start.  But you'll may
also want to look at Java, or scripting languages within the Java
virtual machine world like Scala or Jython.

Neal McBurnett                 http://neal.mcburnett.org/

On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 10:11:22AM -0700, Andrew Barilla wrote:
> I personally prefer Python over Ruby, Perl, etc.  I used it for some classes I
> took and the pseudocode ended up being longer than the Python code.  Also, I
> think Django is one of the best web frameworks around.
> 
> On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 9:57 AM, David Overcash <funnylookinhat at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>     I'm not a fan of python personally, but I've heard great things.  All of
>     that said, whatever you do, stick with a scripting language before anything
>     else (Perl, Python, Ruby, Etc) so that you don't have to deal with learning
>     about compilers, etc.  After that you should move on C - it's definitely
>     the basis for learning all/most languages and going from there is ideal.
> 
>     -David
> 
>     On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 7:55 AM, Collins Richey <crichey at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>         On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 7:02 AM, Sean Dial <tesseractheart at hotmail.com>
>         wrote:
>         > Hey guys
>         >    I'm interested in learning to program. I'm a fan of open source.
>         I've
>         > never programed in my life. And I'm just doing this for fun and
>         experience.
>         > Knowing all this, a friend of mine suggested I start with Python.
>         Does
>         > anyone have any advice on where to begin?
> 
>         Yes. Try Ruby instead - very clean syntax and sensible object coding.
>         I've programmed in a dozen or more languages for 40 years, and there
>         are still some common Python functions that even I can't grok.
> 
>         --
>         Collins Richey
>             If you fill your heart with regrets of yesterday and the worries
>             of tomorrow, you have no today to be thankful for.
> 
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