On May 12, 12:27 pm, "John Salerno" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Just something that crosses my mind every time I delve into "Learning > Python" each night. Does anyone see any value in learning Python when you > don't need to for school, work, or any other reason? I mean, sure, there's > value in learning anything at any time, but for something like a programming > language, I can't help but feel that I will be mostly unable to use what I > learn simply because I have no reason to use it. > > The *process* of learning is enough fun for me, and every now and then I do > find a small use for Python that really pays off, but for the most part I'm > wondering what people's thoughts are as far as simply learning it for the > sake of learning. Does it seem like a silly endeavor to most people? Did > anyone here learn a programming language when you didn't need to? If so, how > much and in what capacity did you use it after you learned it? > > Hopefully this question even makes sense!
Seems silly to learn a programming language for it's own sake. Why would you want to learn something you aren't going to use? My attitude is I may not have an immediate use planned, but such uses should become apparent as I learn more. For example, I collect movie ticket sales stats from The Internet Movie Database. That meant going to their site, finding the page that has the stats for a certain week, copy the page, fix it up a bit and then import it into Access. And since I only got around to updating once or twice a year, it was a labor intensive process. But in the course of learning Python, it became apparent that I could - have Python scrape the web pages - process the raw data - do the database inserts I never thought of those things when I started Python, but if you pay attention to what you're "learning", these kind of things should jump out at you. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
