---------------------------- On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 4:24 PM CET Andrew Berg wrote:
>On 2015.01.16 09:03, Chris Angelico wrote: >> Scenario: You're introducing someone to Python for the first time. >> S/he may have some previous programming experience, or may be new to >> the whole idea of giving a computer instructions. You have a couple of >> minutes to show off how awesome Python is. What do you do? >> >> I was thinking along the lines of a simple demo in the REPL, showing >> off some of Python's coolest features. But then I got stuck on the >> specifics. What are Python's best coolnesses? What makes for a good >> demo? >> >> Ideally, this should be something that can be demo'd quickly and >> easily, and it should be impressive without going into great details >> of "and see, this is how it works on the inside". So, how would you >> brag about this language? >If the person is already familiar with programming, you could show off how >Python doesn't do a best effort guess at what to do when you make a mistake >(explicit is better than implicit). Many other languages will, for example, >make an undefined variable into a variable defined as an empty string or allow >silly things like 5 + "cheese", whereas Python will let you know that you made >a mistake somewhere instead of letting garbage propagate. This behavior can be >frustrating for newbies to Python, but with someone there to explain why it >works that way, they can learn to appreciate it instead of giving up in anger >after Python keeps throwing exceptions at them. > >If the person is not familiar with programming, show them how easy it is to get >something useful written quickly, even with only the stdlib Completely agree! Find out that person's itch and make a scratch.py that shows how problem-oriented the language is, with code that somewhat reads like regular English. REPL will also work, if you prepare it well enough. Ipython Notebook! >Low-level details >are handled so that you can focus on what you want the program to do, and there >is a ton of stuff in the stdlib so that it's likely you don't need to go >searching for a bunch of different libraries so that again, you can focus what >you want the program to do. For this, chances are, that person has some things >in mind already that are not difficult to get started with using Python. Also, >using the REPL for this makes it an even better demo. You can probably have the >basic functionality of whatever cool thing they want right there in the REPL. >-- >https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
