In article <338e8fb0-c9ec-462a-b560-1c1ff77de...@googlegroups.com>, Rustom Mody <rustompm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> [To the OP] > Yeah I am in the minority at least out here in considering > comprehensions simpler than loops. Take your pick When comprehensions first came out, I stubbornly refused to get my head around them. Now, I'm totally addicted. To the extent that I consider dict comprehensions to the THE killer feature of 2.7 :-) But, putting on my instructor's hat, I think it's important to answer questions at a level that can be understood by the student. Painting with a broad brush, there's three or four kinds of people asking questions on this list: 1) People who are totally new to programming, and are learning Python as their first language. These are the people who are still struggling to understand fundamental concepts. They haven't figured out yet that the first step to solving a problem is to decide what algorithms you're going to use, and only then can you start translating that into code. They need to be led in small steps towards basic knowledge. 2) People who are (at least somewhat) experienced programmers, and are learning Python as a second language. Their experiential background is limited to one way of doing things (i.e. the Java way, or the PHP way, or whatever language way they learned first). They mostly should be shown how translate the things they already know into familiar feeling constructs. You already know how to write a loop, this is how we do it in Python. You already know how build a data structure that maps keys to values, this is how we do it in Python. Only after they've become comfortable with that, should they start exploring the really cool features of Python. 3) People who already know many languages, and are learning Python as their n-th. These folks have seen multiple ways of doing things, and can understand concepts at a higher level. Oh, Python dicts are more like C++ STL maps than PHP arrays. Oh, variables have function scope and don't have to be explicitly declared. Oh, RAII is spelled "with" in this language. Oh, functions are first-class objects, but code blocks are not. 4) People who are already proficient Python programmers and are looking to explore deeper topics. I think suggesting comprehensions in an answer should be reserved for people at levels 3 and 4. Maybe level 2-1/2. Certainly not level 1. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
