On Mon, Jul 23, 2007 at 10:48:10PM -0700, Paul Rubin wrote: > If you're having trouble with Python because you're new at > programming, I can sympathize--I don't think it's the most > beginner-friendly of languages despite the efforts in that direction > by the designers.
Just curious--what language would you recommend as most beginner-friendly? My previous programming experience was with BASIC--and I think it is true that BASIC will, in many ways, rot your brain. I had used QBasic and, later, a little VBA and some PHP. It took some time to unlearn some bad things (object orientation in VBA seems to be mostly a hack, for example, while PHP seems to be a big hack generally) but it seems to me that Python helped me learn my first modern programming language. > I think Python is not used in university programs very much. Look for > one that uses SICP (Scheme) or CTM (Mozart/Oz) or a functional > language like Haskell, in preference to the ones that use Java (the > Cobol of the 1990's). With some reasonable experience in Scheme or > Mozart or Haskell, plus a Python manual, you'll be well on your way. I had heard of these languages, but learning them is a bit discouraging because (Java excepted) they don't seem to get much practical use. In college I had a programming course that used C++. Big mistake in my view, and we didn't learn much in the way of true principles (in retrospect it would have been nice if they had us use GCC rather than Borland on Windows.) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
