Given Python's original goal was to be friendly to techies who are not specifically computer scientists, I'm finding it telling how few physics majors get any exposure to the language, even today.
Even though it's used a lot on the job in many walks of life (per success stories), I think we could do better. I'm not blaming Python per se, but I think the OO paradigm shift left many competent coders behind, still remembering a golden age when they were able to get work done using Fortran or Pascal. Now they open a tutorial or book on such as Python, and immediately feel lost. There's a lot of new jargon, and not many references to languages they already know. Where is "Python for Pascal programmers"? One might say this is only a generation gap and people new to coding are picking up the latest and greatest concepts. Unfortunately, I'm seeing a lot of evidence that this is not true, at least not outside of CS departments, because it's the older generation that's teaching the younger, and now that they've lost proficiency, they're making do with inappropriate and inadequate solutions a lot of the time. In sum, I think Python could be reaching more people than it is, including in its original target demographic (technical people needing an easy computer language). For more background, check out my latest blog post here: http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2006/05/coffee-shop-physics.html Kirby _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
