On Saturday, December 14, 2013 10:41:09 AM UTC+5:30, David Hutto wrote: > Don't get me wrong, I didn't mean reinventing the wheel is a bad > thing, just that once you get the hang of things, you need to > display some creativity in your work to set yourself apart from the > rest.
> Nowadays, everyone's a programmer. > If it weren't for reinventing the wheel, then we wouldn't have > abs(antilock breaking systems), or new materials, or different > treading for water displacement or hydroplaning. > The point was just to try something in python, and to 'boldly go > where no 'man' has gone before'. Just to remind her that it's not > just about python, but what you can accomplish with it, and > distinguish yourself from others. To complement what David is saying, programmers need to know programming but a lot else besides in order to become even minimally productive. eg Primary Development tools/aids 1. Help 2. Interpreter-CLI 3. Interpreter-Introspection 4. Editor 5. Completion ('intellisense') 6. Tags (navigation) 7. Refactoring 8. Integration with 'non-programming' below Other Development Tools 1. Debugger 2. Profiler 3. Heap Profiler 4. Coverage Non-Programming Area | Tool(s) ------------------+---------------------- packaging | distutils, setuptools | pip | Native tools (eg apt) versioning | hg, git, bzr multiple pythons | virtualenv automation | tox testing | unittest, nose, pytest build | scons, make... deployment | fabric Yeah I know this can sound a bit intimidating :-) In actual practice most active developers need to know about 30% of the above But you need to know which is your 30% ;-) PS. Yeah you can say Im just a teacher trying to justify my job!! On the other side, for years I argued with the authorities that a 3 year CS degree could be reduced to 6 months. But I dont think it could be reduced to 6 days... or even 6 weeks -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list