In article <hgll51$cv...@panix5.panix.com>, a...@pythoncraft.com (Aahz) wrote:
> Looking back over the years, after I learned Python I realized that I > never really had enjoyed programming before. That's a sad commentary. Python is fun to use, but surely there are other ways you can enjoy programming? The first thing I learned how to program was an HP-9810 (http://www.hpmuseum.org/hp9810.htm). I had LOADS of fun with that. Then I learned BASIC (using my high school's ASR-33 hookup to a HP-3000 a couple of towns away). Lots of fun there too. Then came Fortran. I guess I had fun with that, at least in the beginning. I did a bunch of assembler. Some of it was fun (pdp-11, 6800), some of it was not (pdp-10, IBM-1130). Lisp was fun for a while, but I never really got into it. C was fun at the beginning, but quickly became a drag. C++ was was evil and horrible at the beginning. As opposed to now, when I'm somewhat of an expert in it, and it's still evil and horrible. Learning PostScript was blast! One of the true epiphanies of my programming career was hooking a video terminal up to the RS-232 port on an Apple LaserWriter, typing a few lines of PostScript at it, and watching a page come out with a square drawn on it. Everybody should learn PostScript. People think of it as just some document printing thing, but it's a real (Turing-complete) programming language. Not just that, but it's a fun language to learn, and lets you explore some corners of the language design space which most people never see. Go forth and learn PostScript! Learning Java was about as much fun as kissing your sister. I'm sure I've left a few out, but the point is there are plenty of ways to have fun programming besides Python. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
