Re: the python name

[Peter J. Holzer]

On 2019-01-04 12:56:56 -0500, songbird wrote:
> Peter J. Holzer wrote:
> > Almost all of these points don't seem to be related to the language, but
> > to your environment.
> 
>   an application isn't useful unless it actually can
> be deployed and used in an environment.

True. But environments are different. And many factors of the
environment are completely independent of the language.

For example, about 10 years ago I built a continuous integration
pipeline for a project I was working on (we didn't call it that - I'm
not sure the name had been invented at that time, but the concept is
much older). It checked every minute if something had been committed
into the master branch of the repository, checked it out, ran the test
suite, and if all the tests succeeded, deployed the application on the
test server. I also revoked the developer's privileges to install
anything directly on the test server. The result was that any change
took about half an hour to show up on the server.

The software was written in Perl and Java. Was it Perl's fault that the
Change-Deploy-Test cycle was so slow? Was it Java's fault?
No. It wasn't the fault of either of the languages. It was a combination
of the system I've built (which always ran the complete test suite and
didn't try to skip irrelevant tests), the size of the project (the test
suite was huge and some tests were slow), the components I used (for
example, cron can only run a job every minute) and of organizational
measures (revoking privileges) I took.

Somebody who never used Perl before and encountered our system might say
"Perl is bad because it takes half an hour to deploy an application",
but that wouldn't be correct.

Similarly, when you write that it takes half an hour for your changes to
show up, and that you have to clear some caches, that doesn't seem
related to the language but to your specific environment. 

I write mostly web-applications and programs intended to be run from the
command line or cron. With Django or Flask, changes usually show up
within a second or so in the development environment (I don't even have
to restart the server, it restarts automatically when I save a file).
CLI scripts are of course also ready to run as soon as I save them. And
caches may or may not be a problem but that is application-specific. To
deploy my changes (to the test or production environment), a "git pull"
plus maybe some other actions is sufficient - again that completes in
seconds, not minutes.

So we are both using the same language, but I see my changes immediately
and you have to wait half an hour. The difference is that we are working
in different environments.

Now it may be that the tools that Python provides are ill-suited to your
environment, and that improving those tools (or providing additional
ones) may help you and possibly others. Or it may be that you have to
change something in your environment which is completely outside of the
control of the Python developers.

I'm not able to figure out from your vague and general descriptions
whether a change in the Python tool-chain or a change in your
environment would help, much less a specific change.


>   at least these make sense:
> 
>   https://packaging.python.org/tutorials/installing-packages/
>   https://docs.python.org/3/installing/index.html#installing-index

So your problem is packaging? I didn't even figure that out from your
previous mail. (Though now I remember vaguely that you may have
complained about packaging before. Hint: On a busy mailinglist, don't
assume that everybody remembers everything you have written before.
Provide enough context in every mail that people know what you are
talking about.)

I haven't packaged anything yet. I have looked at the documentation
several times and I agree that it looks somewhat daunting (I am not
unfamiliar with packaging systems: I have built rpm and deb packages,
and used both the Makefile.PL and Module::Builder systems for Perl, but
the Python docs left me somewhat at a loss - and since I didn't actually
need it I postponed learning how to do it).

hp

-- 
   _  | Peter J. Holzer| we build much bigger, better disasters now
|_|_) || because we have much more sophisticated
| |   | h...@hjp.at | management tools.
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/ | -- Ross Anderson 


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
-- 
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: the python name

[Peter J. Holzer]

On 2019-01-04 22:59:40 -0500, Avi Gross wrote:
> I don't go back to the beginning of FORTRAN. My comment was not that FORTRAN
> was badly named when it was among the first to do such things. I am saying
> that in retrospect, almost any language can do a basic subset of arithmetic
> operations.

So this is something that Fortran did right. In hindsight we might be
tempted to say that this was obvious and no great achievement, but I'm
not sure it felt that way at the time. There were certainly other
languages like Lisp (1958, a bit after Fortran) and Forth (1970 - quite
a bit later) whose inventors thought that the way mathematicians write
expressions isn't the best way to program computers. 

But as you say almost all programming languages still in wide use today
do it like Fortran (whether they copied it from Fortran or invented it
independently), so it is now the "natural" way to do it.


> And there is nothing in principle that necessarily stops any
> modern language code from being optimized by translators to be even more
> rapid than the original versions of FORTRAN.

I'm sure many current languages are much faster than the *original*
versions of FORTRAN. Those were among the very first compilers and
people hadn't figured out how to generate efficient code yet.

*Modern* Fortran compilers however are quite good and continue to get
better.

> If anything, I can well imagine algorithms using parallel
> architectures from performing some operations way faster.

One advantage of Fortran over C is indeed that it is easier to exploit
parallelism in Fortran programs than in C programs.

If you implement the same algorithm in naive Fortran and naive C, the
Fortan compiler might figure out that the algorithm can be parallelized
while the C compiler can't be sure. (Both languages have constructs
(some native, some as extensions) to specify that explicitely, but the
programmer has to use them (and use them correctly))

hp

-- 
   _  | Peter J. Holzer| we build much bigger, better disasters now
|_|_) || because we have much more sophisticated
| |   | h...@hjp.at | management tools.
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/ | -- Ross Anderson 


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
-- 
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Python packaging (was: the python name)

[Peter J. Holzer]

On 2019-01-06 13:26:15 +0100, Peter J. Holzer wrote:
> I haven't packaged anything yet. I have looked at the documentation
> several times and I agree that it looks somewhat daunting (I am not
> unfamiliar with packaging systems: I have built rpm and deb packages,
> and used both the Makefile.PL and Module::Builder systems for Perl, but
> the Python docs left me somewhat at a loss - and since I didn't actually
> need it I postponed learning how to do it).

I take that back. I just worked through
https://packaging.python.org/tutorials/packaging-projects/ and it seems
pretty simple and straightforward. I don't think I've seen this tutorial
last time I looked. Either it didn't exist then (in its current form) or
I was looking in the wrong place.

hp


-- 
   _  | Peter J. Holzer| we build much bigger, better disasters now
|_|_) || because we have much more sophisticated
| |   | h...@hjp.at | management tools.
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/ | -- Ross Anderson 


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
-- 
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: the python name

[Peter J. Holzer]

On 2019-01-06 13:43:02 -0500, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
> On Sun, 6 Jan 2019 13:26:15 +0100, "Peter J. Holzer" 
> declaimed the following:
> 
> >For example, about 10 years ago I built a continuous integration
> >pipeline for a project I was working on
[...]
> >The result was that any change took about half an hour to show up on
> >the server.
> 
>   Lucky you... In 1981 I was tasked with porting an application (FORTRAN
> IV) to a minicomputer (CDC MP60 ruggedized for military field drops).
[...]
>   It took three HOURS to compile the application.

Yes, I've been lucky to never be involved in a really large project.
Computers have become much faster since the 1980's, but programs also
have become much larger, so multi-hour compiles still exist.

Hoever, this is the Python list and one of the advantages of Python is
that we don't have to compile our code. So we need a different excuse
for fencing on office chairs ;-).

hp

-- 
   _  | Peter J. Holzer| we build much bigger, better disasters now
|_|_) || because we have much more sophisticated
| |   | h...@hjp.at | management tools.
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/ | -- Ross Anderson 


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
-- 
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Encounter issues to install Python

[Olivier Oussou via Python-list]

 Hi dear Anthony,I am using Windows systeme. I have download the set up uf 
python 3.6.4 (32-bit) and I can not install the software on my computer. I need 
your technical assistance to solve this matter and I will be glad if you do so.
Best regard!
OlivierMedical entomologist, Benin


Le samedi 13 octobre 2018 à 19:24:28 UTC+2, Anthony Flury 
 a écrit :  
 
  
Olivier, 
 
 
Welcome to the list - before we can help you, we need some more information : 
 

   - What Operating system are you using - Windows/Mac/Linux/Raspberry 
Pi/Android for something else ?
   -  What command or installer did you use to try to install Python.   
 
   - What issues did you have during installation - if any ?   
 
   - What interface are you trying to access, and how are you doing that ?
   - Do you get error messages?   
 
 Unless you tell us what the problem is we can't possibly help.
 
 On 08/10/18 20:21, Olivier Oussou via Python-list wrote:
  
 Hi!I downloaded and installed python 3.6.4 (32-bit) on my computer but I have 
problems and can not access the python interface.
I need your technical assistance to solve this matter. 

Best regard!

Olivier OUSSOUMedical entomologist, Benin
 
 
 -- 
 Anthony Flury
 Email : anthony.fl...@btinternet.com
 Twitter : @TonyFlury
-- 
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

RE: the python name

[Avi Gross]

[Can we ever change the subject line?]
{REAL SUBJECT: degrees of compilation.}
Peter wrote:

"...
Hoever, this is the Python list and one of the advantages of Python is that we 
don't have to compile our code. So we need a different excuse for fencing on 
office chairs ;-).
..."

I understand what he means, but python does sometimes do a half-compilation to 
byte code if the compiled version does not exist or the file being read is 
newer. And, if it cannot write a file, it compiles it in memory each and every 
time. This half-digested format may not be considered a compile down to the 
level of machine code, obviously.

I have no idea of relative run  times for the compiles as so much depends on 
the contents of files and their sizes and the underlying language/compilers. 
Compiling a project with an endless numbers of pieces can take a very long 
time. When you are just doing one file now and then, not so much. I suspect 
that the common method of spreading out a program into many small files can 
have an impact on the time it takes.

I won't share my own war stories of how to compile in what now seem primitive 
environments on overloaded machines where you often figured out your mistakes 
on paper before the compiler quit and showed you officially 😊

What is the purpose of compiling? Superficially, it is to catch serious errors. 
So if there are serious errors, or perhaps to put it mildly, places where the 
compiler can't figure out exactly what you, the programmer, meant, it often can 
quit early. Only when it finds nothing wrong does it need to finish to the end. 
Sometimes parts of what you may not necessarily consider the compiler can be 
done selectively or even externally.

I mean you can use tools to tune up your code in ways that search not so much 
for obvious errors but for potential errors or possibly poor technique that 
generate warnings or hints. If you add some of this functionality in the normal 
compile, you slow it down. Similarly, there are aspects that optimize the code 
in some ways that are good to have in final production code ready to ship but 
may not be needed every time you compile.

-- 
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: the python name

[Grant Edwards]

On 2019-01-06, Peter J. Holzer  wrote:
> On 2019-01-06 13:43:02 -0500, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
>> On Sun, 6 Jan 2019 13:26:15 +0100, "Peter J. Holzer" 
>> declaimed the following:
>> 
>> >For example, about 10 years ago I built a continuous integration
>> >pipeline for a project I was working on
> [...]
>> >The result was that any change took about half an hour to show up on
>> >the server.
>> 
>>  Lucky you... In 1981 I was tasked with porting an application (FORTRAN
>> IV) to a minicomputer (CDC MP60 ruggedized for military field drops).
> [...]
>>  It took three HOURS to compile the application.
>
> Yes, I've been lucky to never be involved in a really large project.
> Computers have become much faster since the 1980's, but programs also
> have become much larger, so multi-hour compiles still exist.

On some of my (not _that_ old) machines, it takes about 1.5 days to
compile the Chrome browser.

-- 
Grant




-- 
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Compilation (was: the python name)

[Peter J. Holzer]

On 2019-01-06 15:09:40 -0500, Avi Gross wrote:
> [Can we ever change the subject line?]

Feel free.

> {REAL SUBJECT: degrees of compilation.}
> Peter wrote:
> 
> "... Hoever, this is the Python list and one of the advantages of
> Python is that we don't have to compile our code. So we need a
> different excuse for fencing on office chairs ;-). ..."
> 
> I understand what he means, but python does sometimes do a
> half-compilation to byte code if the compiled version does not exist
> or the file being read is newer.

This is compilation, but it isn't a separate phase. We don't invoke a
"python compiler" to produce an "executable" which we then "execute". We
invoke the interpreter on the source code, which compiles the source
code as needed (so in the literal sense it is a just in time compiler,
although this isn't what we usually mean by that term). 

And because this happens in principle every time we start a python
program (yes, there is a cache, but that is incidental) the compiler
must be fast and primitive and basically unnoticable.


> What is the purpose of compiling? Superficially, it is to catch
> serious errors.

I strongly disagree with this. The purpose of compiling is to translate
from one language into another. Typically, the source language is more
programmer-friendly, higher level and the target language is more
machine-friendly, lower level. But there are exceptions.

Finding errors is mostly a consequence of this function. If the compiler
cannot parse the source code or doesn't have enough information to
generate code in the target language, it cannot fulfill its function and
has to bail out.

There are programs with the primary purpose of finding errors: We call
these linters, static analysers, etc.

(From your other mails I guess that you almost certainly remember the
Unix distinction between cc and lint.)

Of course sometimes these are functions are conflated. Since an
optimizing compiler has to analyse variable usage anyway for efficient
register allocation it can also warn you about unused variables at
(almost) no extra cost. So it makes sense to put that warning into the
compiler (I'm less sure if it's a good idea to make this an error, as in
Go). Or the compiler might even get quite expensive checking
capabilities, as the authors think that programmers are more likely to
look at the output of the tool they have to use than to invoke a
separate, optional tool.

hp

-- 
   _  | Peter J. Holzer| we build much bigger, better disasters now
|_|_) || because we have much more sophisticated
| |   | h...@hjp.at | management tools.
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/ | -- Ross Anderson 


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
-- 
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Transparently treating tar files and zip archives as directories

[Skip Montanaro]

I find it useful in some of the work I do to treat Zip archives as if
they were directories. I don't think it would be too difficult to make
it pretty much transparent, so that you could execute something like:

fileobj = magic_open("/path/to/some/archive.zip/some/internal/path/magic.txt")

or equivalent for writing and other list-y, glob-y sorts of things.
(In fact, I'd be mildly surprised if I couldn't find something on PyPI
if I spent a few minutes searching.)

As I considered that idea the other day, I thought, "Hmmm... might be
useful for tar files as well." Alas, the tarfile module API didn't
seem like it would support such a higher level API anywhere near as
easily. Is that a fundamental property/shortcoming of the tarfile
format, or is it just a function of the tarfile module's API?

Skip
-- 
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Transparently treating tar files and zip archives as directories

[Paul Moore]

Pyfilesystem (https://pypi.org/project/fs/) does something like this -
it might be what you're after,

Paul

On Sun, 6 Jan 2019 at 22:32, Skip Montanaro  wrote:
>
> I find it useful in some of the work I do to treat Zip archives as if
> they were directories. I don't think it would be too difficult to make
> it pretty much transparent, so that you could execute something like:
>
> fileobj = magic_open("/path/to/some/archive.zip/some/internal/path/magic.txt")
>
> or equivalent for writing and other list-y, glob-y sorts of things.
> (In fact, I'd be mildly surprised if I couldn't find something on PyPI
> if I spent a few minutes searching.)
>
> As I considered that idea the other day, I thought, "Hmmm... might be
> useful for tar files as well." Alas, the tarfile module API didn't
> seem like it would support such a higher level API anywhere near as
> easily. Is that a fundamental property/shortcoming of the tarfile
> format, or is it just a function of the tarfile module's API?
>
> Skip
> --
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
-- 
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Transparently treating tar files and zip archives as directories

[Skip Montanaro]

> Pyfilesystem (https://pypi.org/project/fs/) does something like this -
> it might be what you're after,

Thanks, Paul. That would seem to check all my boxes and more.

S
-- 
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

RE: Compilation (was: the python name)

[Avi Gross]

Peter,

I suspect there is some python tool that can go through a directory
structure of python code and produce appropriate byte code files in one
sweep. That would not be at run time. And, in any system where the average
user does not have write permission on those folders, that would be a good
idea or every use would be slower.

I don't want to keep dwelling on the past and would like to hear more about
the current and perhaps near-future state of python and perhaps new added
functionality and upgrades in some modules outside the built-in variety.

So I would rather not get into detailed discussions of the differences
between translation and compilation and other such words. I will grant your
points. I did not intend what you may have read into it. As you suggest, I
am very aware of generations of tools including lint versus cc as I did
programming back for more years using more languages and operating systems
and machine types than I care to remember. There is though a subtle
distinction between what programmers and organizations are supposed to do
and what individual programmers do.

The rules normally suggest getting something to be syntactically correct
then testing units and larger groupings and then entire projects. It used to
mean spending 90% of your time writing documents and attending endless
review meetings. People tend to find ways around some of that. It is amazing
how often they write the code first then write a document describing how
they will do it!

My point was that many developers used a compilation as a way to partially
debug their code. Typically you got some errors or at least warnings and no
proper result. You would try to fix and resubmit until it compiled properly.
That may not be the PURPOSE but it often was how things got done. Leaving
out a comma or semicolon  or calling a function with the wrong number of
arguments or having unbalanced parentheses or a variable name spelled wrong
and so on were often caught only by the compiler. Nowadays we often have
tools that check for lint without actually making an executable and in the
case of python, there really is no executable as even the byte code version
is run live.

Worse, I have seen how you can change a function to take an additional
argument and wonder what other code calls that function. The lazy way is to
recompile everything and see what fails!

Is this the PURPOSE of the compiler? Of course not. The purpose is to finish
the process and deliver the goods. But when developing code, some people
decided to be lazy about proofreading their own code and let the compiler
take a stab at it. As I said, when the process took long enough, they often
read the code or had a friend look at it and found the errors and KILLED the
compile and resubmitted it on the upgraded code. This speeded their own work
a bit but meant the computer was overloaded for little purpose.

Now when I import a bunch of code to my machine and run the compiler to make
executables, the purpose may be closer to the intended purpose if all goes
well. Unfortunately, sometimes it is a way to find out if your setup is in
some way flawed or you have the wrong version of something ...

Let me ask a question. Switch to a word processing concept. When writing
something, do you write a first draft mostly to completion and then do
various forms of checking and revision or do you pause after each sentence
or paragraph and run tools to check spelling and grammar and tell you what
grade level readers need to understand it? In the earlier days this was not
even a question. Then we got spell checkers that ran on their own and then
other tools that gave lots of (often useless) advice about writing too much
in a passive voice or that the document used long sentences and big (meaning
technical) words so the person needed to have a college education. Well,
most of us had a Masters or two or a Ph.D. and besides we tended to be
highly technical and much of the jargon in the documents was REQUIRED for
the purpose.

So, after a while, people ran these lint-style programs less often, maybe
mostly in the final phase. But, similarly, before the What You See is What
You get days, people would use a markup language like nroff/troff and PRINT
the darn thing to be picked up hours later downstairs. You could say we
compiled it, sort of. We would then read the hard copy to find all our
errors like turning on bold and not turning it off or not starting a new
paragraph or noting the sentence made no sense when seen all at once without
intervening formatting commands. So we edited the code and printed it again!

Worse were things you really could not see properly on screen. Parts of our
documents were little programs of sorts that produced equations, tables, and
computer graphics where we told it to connect a line from the northwest
corner of object 1 to ...

Sound like compilation to you? It was. You had to pipe the document through
filters like tbl and eqn and pic that expanded the language of

Re: the python name

[rbowman]

On 01/02/2019 11:06 PM, songbird wrote:

  i can only claim to have written one program in
SNOBOL and that was over 30yrs ago...


My sympathies...


--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: the python name

[rbowman]

On 01/02/2019 12:41 PM, Schachner, Joseph wrote:

The name "Python" may not make sense, but what sense does the name Java make, 
or even C (unless you know that it was the successor to B), or Haskell or Pascal or even 
BASIC?  Or Caml or Kotlin or Scratch?  Or Oberon or R? Or Smalltalk, or SNOBOL?


BASIC is an acronym..

http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dartmouth/BASIC_Oct64.pdf

Beginner's All purpose Symbolic Instruction Code

It was Dartmouth University's didactic language for non-engineers and 
probably nobody imagined it would ever go anyplace. I went to an 
engineering school and learned FORTRAN in '65, the same time period, and 
never heard of BASIC until much later.


My wife went to a liberal arts college where they also had a didactic 
language that ran on CDC systems. I can't remember the name of the 
language but both it and CDC are dusty footnotes now,


SNOBOL was sort of a tortured acronym, StriNg Oriented symBOlic 
Language. I don't know if that was a play on COmmon Business Oriented 
Language.


FORTRAN came from FORmula TRANslation.  My favorite is a weird little 
language mainly useful for matrix operations that IBM modestly named APL 
- A Programming Language. Of course they also had PL/I, Programming 
Language One.



--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: the python name

[rbowman]

On 01/03/2019 07:59 AM, Jack Dangler wrote:

Odd that COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language)  and DIBOL (Digital
Business Oriented Language) follow the paradigm, but SNOBOL went with
"symBOlic"...


I vaguely remember it as being sort of an inside joke vis a vis COBOL.
--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: the python name

[rbowman]

On 01/02/2019 06:03 PM, Avi Gross wrote:

A Programming Language? APL.


A company I worked for bought an IBM 5120, not to be confused with the 
later 51xx PC's. It shipped with BASIC and APL in the ROM, had a toggle 
switch to select between the two, and the weird characters on the 
keyboard. That is as close as I ever got to that one.

--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: the python name

[rbowman]

On 01/03/2019 09:53 AM, Avi Gross wrote:

 Bad analogy, but snakes do tend to shed their skin periodically as they grow.


3.x certainly was a snake shedding its skin. ESRI moved to 3 for the 
cloud oriented products but their non-cloud products are still 2.7 and 
that's the world I live in.


Some of the changes seem a bit gratuitous.
--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: the python name

[rbowman]

On 01/03/2019 12:40 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:

Do I miss-remember that there was an anaconda language at sometime in the
past? Not long after python made its debute? I've not see it mentioned
in a decade so maybe its died?


Very alive and well...

https://www.anaconda.com/what-is-anaconda/

It's not a separate language but is a Python/R combo.
--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: the python name

[rbowman]

On 01/03/2019 01:28 PM, Grant Edwards wrote:

On 2019-01-03, Gene Heskett  wrote:


Do I miss-remember that there was an anaconda language at sometime in the
past? Not long after python made its debute? I've not see it mentioned
in a decade so maybe its died?


About 20 years ago, the RedHat Linux (way before RHEL) installer
(which was written in Python) was called Anaconda.

That would have been about the time I switched from RH to SuSE. I forget 
the details but RH 'enhanced' Python for their own ends and broke some 
of our standard Python. That was the same era when they released gcc 
2.96 that wasn't a FSF release and had problems.


Bleeding edge is fine if that's what you've signed up for but I prefer a 
little stability.

--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: the python name

[rbowman]

On 01/03/2019 10:08 PM, Stefan Ram wrote:

DL Neil  writes:

Thus the OP's original assumption/confusion between a programming
language and a serpent; Java and a large island; right down to C, R, etc
which are too short to be usable search terms in most engines.


  And still, you enter "Ant" into a good Web search engine,
  and you get exactly the sensible first hit:

Apache Ant - Welcome
https://ant.apache.org/


Depending on what you call a good search engine... It's third on 
DuckDuckGo, second on Bing.


--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: the python name

[rbowman]

On 01/04/2019 09:06 AM, William Ray Wing wrote:

On 3/01/19 2:03 PM, Avi Gross wrote:

Challenge: Can we name any computer language whose name really would suggest it 
was a computer language?
I think the name is the least important aspect of a computer language.


I’d like to propose that classic FORTRAN (FORmulaTRANslator) came/comes close.


While that was the first language I learned, I'll have to give the nod 
to PL/I -- Programming Language One and its child PL/M, Programming 
Language for Microrocessors as well as the somewhat strange APL A 
Programming Language


--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: the python name

[rbowman]

On 01/04/2019 09:34 AM, Avi Gross wrote:

Although I used FORTRAN ages ago and it still seems to be in active use, I am 
not clear on why the name FORMULA TRANSLATOR was chosen. I do agree it does 
sound more like a computer language based on both the sound and feel of FORTRAN 
as well as the expanded version.


It made sense at the time. I first learned FORTRAN in 1965 in 
engineering school. At that time 'computer science' was in its infancy 
and our everyday tool was a slide rule. The computer, an IBM System 
360/30, was seen as another useful tool and engineers should learn to 
translate their formulas into a form acceptable to it. You wrote your 
efforts on coding forms, laboriously transferred those to punch cards, 
and offered your deck up to the priests who fed it to the god visible 
behind plate glass in his air conditioned lair.


http://www.lib.rpi.edu/dept/library/html/Archives//buildings/chapel.html

When I was there the chapel was still the library and the computer was 
in a modern building but finally the new god was moved to a suitable house.



--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: the python name

[rbowman]

On 01/04/2019 11:17 AM, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:

One would
turn in a deck of cards to be spooled in the job queue, and come back some
hours later to get the printout from the job.


Or, in most cases, obscure compiler errors because you forget the 
continuation punch in column 6. Back to the keypunch room and resubmit.

--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Deletion of Environmental Variables

[Logan Vogelsong]

Hello- I think I subscribed now.



I planned on using python to simulate different cipher to challenge myself,
but I kinda deleted my environmental variables to python. I run Windows 10
and wanted to get NumPy and MatPlotLib modules imported to python.



Basically, I downloaded python 3.7.1 first, but when I realized it was not
compatible with TensorFlow (I wanted to make a machine learning algorithm
at a point in time), I uninstalled it to get python 3.6.1. Somehow, maybe I
misread a stack overflow post, but I deleted all my path files to python36
for whatever reason. I still have no idea why I did this. Then, I thought,
if I could uninstall python 3.6.1 and reinstall it pip would come back and
I could use python from the cmd. I uninstalled it and tried reinstalling
(with chocolatey this time) it for no avail. I tried searching for all the
correct environment variables to put them back in manually, but I cannot
seem to find most of them since python is still “not recognized as an
internal or external command, operable program or batch file.” In my cmd. I
really want pip to work so I can download modules.



I may follow:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4750806/how-do-i-install-pip-on-windows

to try and help reinstall pip and I may redownload it through:

https://pypi.org/project/pip/#files

with help from:

https://pypi.org/project/setuptools/#files



As an aside, I have so far taught myself everything I know about python,
and I am willing to learn even more.



Thank you for any help,



Logan Vogelsong
-- 
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: the python name

[rbowman]

On 01/03/2019 09:53 PM, DL Neil wrote:

Thus the OP's original assumption/confusion between a programming
language and a serpent; Java and a large island; right down to C, R, etc
which are too short to be usable search terms in most engines.


C# wins the prize for not getting what you expect in a search engine.
--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: the python name

[rbowman]

On 01/03/2019 05:31 PM, Avi Gross wrote:

Why did I mention Anaconda? Because python is also the name of a snake and
some people considered it appropriate to name their pet project that
includes python, as the name of another snake:


Probably not politically correct to mention but Colt had seven snake 
revolvers if you count the specialty Boa. The Anaconda was the last one 
but the Python was the most popular and fetches ridiculous prices today.


Cobra and Boa are programming languages and there was an abandoned 
attempt at Viper, but I don't think anyone has grabbed Diamondback yet. 
(King Cobra is the 7th Colt snake but I'll count plain Cobra as close 
enough)

--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: the python name

[rbowman]

On 01/04/2019 10:45 AM, Peter J. Holzer wrote:

FORTRAN is older than most of us. So it influenced what we think a
computer language should sound like.


Sadly, not for all of us...  FORTRAN seeded later languages with terms 
that are obscure, like rewind().  A blazing powerhouse like the IBM 
System 360/30 had at most 64k of core, and by that I mean real magnetic 
core knit by little old ladies. It also had massive tape drives. By 
massive I mean 1/2" tape on 10" spools, not that they could hold that 
much data.


Anyway for something like a Fast Fourier you wrote a partial products to 
tape, rewound the tape, took another pass, rinse and repeat. It was a joy.


While FORTRAN definitely had some influence, particularly on BASIC, 
don't give it too much credit. It had little gems like the computed 
goto. It took until Fortran 90 to allow such novelties as lower case and 
free form input. Prior to that it still assumed you were using Hollerith 
cards. I don't think it ever moved beyond the DO loop.



--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Recommendations for a novice user.

[rbowman]

On 01/02/2019 05:14 AM, Hüseyin Ertuğrul wrote:

I don't know the software language at all. What do you recommend to beginners 
to learn Python.
What should be the working systematic? How much time should I spend every day 
or how much time should I spend on a daily basis.


As much time as you can stand. If you want to make a career of software 
you will be studying for the rest of your life. Get used to it.



--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Compilation

[Terry Reedy]

On 1/6/2019 6:20 PM, Avi Gross wrote:


I suspect there is some python tool that can go through a directory
structure of python code and produce appropriate byte code files in one
sweep.


import compileall
help(compileall)

The Windows installer optionally runs it.  It is usually needed if one 
does an all-users install into Program Files, as non-admin users cannot 
cause .pyc files to be writen therein.


--
Terry Jan Reedy

--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Deletion of Environmental Variables

[Terry Reedy]

On 1/6/2019 9:56 PM, Logan Vogelsong wrote:

I planned on using python to simulate different cipher to challenge myself,
but I kinda deleted my environmental variables to python. I run Windows 10
and wanted to get NumPy and MatPlotLib modules imported to python.

Basically, I downloaded python 3.7.1 first, but when I realized it was not
compatible with TensorFlow (I wanted to make a machine learning algorithm
at a point in time), I uninstalled it to get python 3.6.1.


Windows easily allows multiple versions to be installed.  The py 
launcher lets you easily pick which to run (from a command console).


For 3.6, use the latest release, now 3.6.8, which has hundreds of fixes 
since 3.6.1.


If you have multiple versions, you must install 3rd party modules for 
each version you want to import them into.



 Somehow, maybe I

misread a stack overflow post, but I deleted all my path files to python36
for whatever reason. I still have no idea why I did this. Then, I thought,
if I could uninstall python 3.6.1 and reinstall it pip would come back and
I could use python from the cmd. I uninstalled it and tried reinstalling
(with chocolatey this time) it for no avail. I tried searching for all the
correct environment variables to put them back in manually, but I cannot
seem to find most of them since python is still “not recognized as an
internal or external command, operable program or batch file.”


There is, or at least used to be, an option to add the python directly 
to PATH.  But using py instead python is needed anyway to select from 
multiple versions.



In my cmd. I really want pip to work so I can download modules.


By default, the PSF Windows installer installs pip, using the ensurepip 
module.  If this did not happen, you can run it yourself. See

https://docs.python.org/3/library/ensurepip.html

The pydev recommended way to run pip on windows is
> py -x.y pip 
as this installs the package requested into the x.y site-packages 
directory.


--
Terry Jan Reedy


--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Deletion of Environmental Variables

[Paul Moore]

On Mon, 7 Jan 2019 at 06:37, Terry Reedy  wrote:
> The pydev recommended way to run pip on windows is
>  > py -x.y pip 
> as this installs the package requested into the x.y site-packages
> directory.

py -3.7 -m pip ...

Note the extra -m).

Paul
-- 
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list