On Monday, December 22, 2014 9:56:11 AM UTC-6, ryguy7272 wrote: I've been using Python for quite a few years now an i can only once remember using any type of "python installation tools" (easy_install or pip... puke!). I've always found the easiest route to be just downloading a zip/tar file, and then extracting it into my PythonXX/Lib/SitePackages directory -- of course, not without inspecting the source code first!!!
> To everyone else, I'm going back to VBA, VB, C#, Java, > SQL, SSIS, R, & Matlab, simply because all of those work > perfectly fine. [...] Learning Python was both fun & > frustrating. If you need to waste time, work with Python. > If you need to do real work, use any on the following: > VBA, VB, C#, Java, SQL, R, & Matlab. Well if you're coming from *that* background then Python is not going to make sense to you. VB has the power to ruin almost anyone. Naive folks tend to believe that if a language offers a Graphical front-end then that language must be "more advanced"...HA! When i see a graphical GUI builder i run the other direction screaming because i know that graphic builders *ONLY* exist as shoe polish for "turdious API's" Polish a turd, it's still a turd! Now don't get me wrong, i understand the *vital* importance of abstractions, and without them, even the smallest programs would require more finger gymnastics than a mortal human could endure. But there *MUST* be a balance drawn between high level and low level API's, because as you ascend up the abstraction scale, you may feel good for a while, but eventually you will find yourself trapped in a prison API of claustrophobia You could say that Graphical GUI builders are the highest possible abstraction, and you would be correct, but it's not the mere fact that they are "high level" that i find troublesome, no, because *ANY* text based API could be abstracted to a level that becomes suitable for even the laziest programmer, it the fact that they shield you from the architecture of the underlying code, and what inevitably happens is that you find yourself needing a functionality that the Graphical interface does not provide, for which the only solution is sit down and learn the API you have so desperately tried to avoid. Anyone care for a piping hot cup of irony? > I just uninstalled Python and deleted 15 Python books that > I found online. That seems excessive. I'm sorry but if you need 15 books to learn how to write Python code, and you already had prior programming experience, then i am going to say that Python is definitely not for you. Instead of taking the graphical route and attempting to shield you from the harsh realities of life, Python has devoted all it's energy to providing a clean syntax, an integrated documentation capability (via doc strings on the code author's side, and and the help() function on the users side), interactivity, introspection, and a quite extensive stdlib. Granted Python has it's warts, and i'm not here to apologize for *ANY* them, but all in all it's a damn good language that allows me to be far more productive than any other language has. No language can be perfect, but giving up on Python because you could not get a 3rd party package to install is quite ridiculous. I mean, if you were dumping it because of it's shameless herd-conformity to the Unicode standard then AT LEAST that would make sense me! -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list