Re: [Tutor] Java: (and python ?) nearer measles than coffee
Klaus Ramelow wrote: Sometimes I have also some - or more - problems trying digesting python and feeling totally blocked. My programming experience (beginning at the card-reader era) main-frame, mini and micro : Bit / Byte / Word system-programming via switch-console followed by Assembler and commercial software using Basic, Cobol, Pascal and SQL. Mnemonic programming-language - in my understanding - can only be consisting of expressions near the human language. The best example for writing non-system-programms are Basic, Cobol (thanks to Alan) and SQL(especially Informix-SQL as full language - not only for DB). Why should I waste time in learning a language like Java (or more positive: python) ? Nevertheless this Tutor Digest is most helpful, the number of questions / problems show: some more people are looking for a mnemonic-language which should optimized cross-compile to something with multiplatform-capability like Java. Please let me know, if I am entirely wrong. I'm not really sure what you are asking. Many people find Python to be useful and enjoyable for a wide variety of personal and professional programming. But if you are happy with Basic and Cobol and they meet your needs then there is no need to waste your time learning anything else, I suppose. I am not really interested in trying to convince you to learn python; if you decide you want to learn this list is a great place to get help. Kent ___ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
[Tutor] Java: (and python ?) nearer measles than coffee
Hrmmm...my opinion is that you shouldn't waste your time with Java (sorry to any Java coders on this list). It's entirely too automated for my tastes (automatic garbage collection, transparent pointers, etc...). To quote an unknown author who was quite the anti-OOP programmer, it made me want to throw a java.f***ThisException. So why, might you ask, am I bothering learning Python? Well, at first I was looking for a powerful scripting language to prototype with. You know the routine...whip up a quick and dirty version 0.1 and let the customer see what's in store, test layouts, algorithms, design ideas, etc... Reason I use Python #1: But then I noticed something. Python runs on my wife's Windows machine...and my Linux machine...and my OpenBSD machine...and insert your favorite operating system here...etc... The real catch for me was OpenBSD support. Find a thorough java runtime for OpenBSD (I last looked probably a year or two ago, so correct me if I'm wrong on this), and perhaps I'll try it out, but until then, Python is my choice when I need code that will run on multiple OS's. Reason I use Python #2: I'm not trying to flatter anyone, seriously, I'm not...but this list is another reason Python has been a favorite of mine. Reason I use Python #3: I am a strong advocate of Open Source Software and the GPL. If Sun truly supported Open Source, then the OpenBSD team would have the specs for Java. Reason I use Python #4: If I want to code something in Java, give me a week. For Python, give me one night, perhaps two. I prefer getting done so I can move on, ya know? Anyways, those are the first few reasons I use Python. Jonathon Klaus Ramelow wrote: Sometimes I have also some - or more - problems trying digesting python and feeling totally blocked. My programming experience (beginning at the card-reader era) main-frame, mini and micro : Bit / Byte / Word system-programming via switch-console followed by Assembler and commercial software using Basic, Cobol, Pascal and SQL. Mnemonic programming-language - in my understanding - can only be consisting of expressions near the human language. The best example for writing non-system-programms are Basic, Cobol (thanks to Alan) and SQL(especially Informix-SQL as full language - not only for DB). Why should I waste time in learning a language like Java (or more positive: python) ? Nevertheless this Tutor Digest is most helpful, the number of questions / problems show: some more people are looking for a mnemonic-language which should optimized cross-compile to something with multiplatform-capability like Java. Please let me know, if I am entirely wrong. Klaus Ramelow ___ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor ___ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
Re: [Tutor] Java: (and python ?) nearer measles than coffee
some more people are looking for a mnemonic-language which should optimized cross-compile to something with multiplatform-capability like Java. Please let me know, if I am entirely wrong. I'm not really sure what you are asking. Many people find Python to be useful and enjoyable for a wide variety of personal and professional programming. But if you are happy with Basic and Cobol and they meet your needs then there is no need to waste your time learning anything else, I suppose. I want to support Kent in this. We're not language bigots. (In fact, I'm not really much of a Python programmer at the moment. *grin*) I have no idea what a mnemonic language should be: perhaps you're talking about domain-specific languages in the sense discussed in: http://www.ddj.com/184405575 In which case, one argument for learning Python or any other general purpose language is to know the necessary tools to write the domain-specific language you want. That is, the point of a general purpose language is to bootstrap: to give us enough tools to build our way up to the domain. If someone's already done that work, then yes, of course, use the domain-specific language. If I'm doing some kind of simple text processing, then Perl's probably a good choice, because that language has a lot of built-in support for text munging. If I need to do something with database management, I'd be silly if I didn't take a close look at an SQL implementation first. But if I'm writing a simulator for elevator systems, I might be in for some work. It's unlikely that someone has written a domain-specific language for ascending platforms, and I'm probably going to have to bootstrap my way up from a general purpose language (like Python or Perl or Ruby or Java or Scheme or ...) so that I can eventually talk about the problem in the natural terms of my domain. And if a language helps me claw up that much more quickly, then that's a very good reason for me to learn that new language. That's the claim of high-level, general purpose languages: we don't learn them just for their own sake, but because they help us build the tools we need to get to the real interesting problems. ___ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
