Suppose you got this question:
"I'm new to programming and heard that studying two languages, one front
burner, one back burner, is a best practice, as the benefits you get from
'compare and contrast' is like when rubbing two sticks together: you get
fire."
I've been suggesting learning Python (front burner) and...
Go (interfaces vs types, slices, concurrency, garbage collected,
compiled)
Rust (no garbage collection, immutability the default, learns from Python)
Clojure (LISPish, big on immutability, targets JVM)
J (successor to APL, very different, uses "parts of speech" -- as in
grammar -- as shoptalk)
JavaScript (humongous stacks and frameworks, Node world, great learning
tools)
what else is especially apropos I wonder. Of course we run up against SQL
and regexes in the course of teaching plain vanilla Python. Ditto HTML/CSS
(more punctuation to learn in your ordinary language class, e.g. English or
French grammar? -- I call these "over the back fence technologies" in the
Youtube below).
------
On another topic, as an instructor I wonder how to introduce context
managers as a topic and my best answer is:
Take advantage of the sqlite3 module in Standard Library and show a context
manager like:
with DB("ufo_reports") as db:
db.useful_tool( )
where DB is like:
import sqlite3 as sql
class DB:
def __init__(self, dbname):
self.dbname = dbname + ".db"
def __enter__(self):
# make the connection, could be to any SQL engine...
self.conn = sql.connect(self.dbname)
self.curs = self.conn.cursor()
return self # <-- to take advantage of related tools
def useful_tool(self):
# have a number of methods geared for working with this
# specific database, up to you how generic we're trying to be
# more useful tools go here
def __exit__(self, *oops):
if self.conn:
self.conn.close()
if oops[0]:
# error handling
# yadda yadda
return False # or True
return True
I yak about all this on Youtube.
https://youtu.be/29p3Ckr8SOA
Kirby
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