Best first programming language

[Mike Hoy]

http://catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#skills1

That's ESR's page. It's a good read and goes over a lot of what you guys are
talking about. I'm following his advice. Currently learning as much python
as I can. I also dabble in Java and C, but my main focus is on Python. It
allows me to focus on the basics of programming without doing the dirty work
like:

prototyping functions
declaring variables
using { and ;
You know all that extra typing that can result in an error.
The trivial programs I write scream for python. Java and C take MANY more
lines of code to accomplish the same thing. Oh and I can write GUI programs
with Python too (Tkinter).

Since he's going to learn Java anyway in school why not learn python now and
get some of the basics down. I suggest buying 'Learning Python' and
devouring it. Write programs with a focus on oop.

I've taken Java in college and ended up dropping it. It was a LOT of
information. I feel I can take it now and pretty easily get through the
class.
HTH

-Mike Hoy

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 5:19 AM, Mike Schwartz <mike.l.schwartz at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 7:29 AM, Jerry Davis <jdawgaz at cox.net> wrote:
>
>> BTW, can someone tell me why this happens?
>>
>> $ perl -e 'print "hello world\n"'
>> hello world
>>
>> $ python -c 'print "hello world"'
>> hello world
>>
>> notice that I DID NOT have to put the \n at then end of the python print
>> statement? is it something to do with the -c (i.e. smart enough to know it
>> is a
>> cmd line script, and automatically puts a \n at the end?) or something?
>>
>> notice what happens when you leave the \n off of the perl script, and add
>> a \n
>> to the python script.
>>
>> just curious.
>>
>> --
>>
> [...]
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>
> YES, I think it has something to do with the way the syntax works, in
> Python, for  whether one "wants" to start
> a new line or not.
>    Instead of being specifically "indicated", e.g., by having some kind
> of  \n right where one "wants" to start a new line, it is determined by
> whether or not a COMMA is present, after the last item in the list (of
> stuff to be printed).  (The last item in the list might also be the only
> item in the list...)  Note that, in a sense the "polarity" is kinda
> backwards
> from the "\n" way of doing things.  If the comma is ABSENT, then it
> ends the old line (starts a new one).
>     By the way, in the summer of 2007, I was searching in the on-line
> tutorial for Python, to find where it teaches (/slash, documents) about
> how this ["comma"] feature works.  I finally found it, but NOT by using
> the (very limited) indexing feature that is provided by that on-line
> tutorial for Python -- rather, I found it by using the "site:..." feature
> of
> doing a google search, and remembering that it can take any leading
> substring of the target URL, -- that is, it is NOT [!] limited to a domain
> name (as the word 'site:' might suggest).
>     In fact, I later wrote an e-mail to Alan Dayley (I looked for it today
> but I have been unable to find it...!) about using that "site:..." feature
> of
> doing a google search, and remembering that it can take any leading
> substring of the target URL -- so it can go beyond (by far) just limiting
> itself to the domain name part of the URL.
> --
> Mike Schwartz
> Glendale  AZ
> schwartz at acm.org
>
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>



-- 
Mike Hoy
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