Even though I "get" your point, I ffeel that putting your eggs in the MS basket is a really bad idea. Yes, one can "learn" from these frameworks, C# has come a long way to be a relatively "cool" language (which incidentally is because it has been "pythonized" during his later incarnations, if anyone does not believe me just check C#' "Dynamic" object and attribute declaration, heck, they even talk about "duck typing" as a valid paradigm..
Here is the problem with the MS environment: it's *not* googling "string methods", but "real" questions such as "instantiating a COM component gives error 0x0a0b0d0e0f" (after you followed the same procedure on a previous PC without problems), you will get the wirdiest set of answers (including some classic ones such "reboot the pc", or "make sure you have the latest service patch" - translation: useless answers) but *rarely* you will get a right answer. With python, and possibly other open source technologies, it is morelikely you find you answer pretty quickly OR you just write your own solution as opposed to having to end up calling "golden" or "platinum" or whatever precious metal MS uses now as an excuse to get your money.. Stick with python (and web2py for that matter), you will do youself a great favor on the long run. Julio On Nov 30, 5:31 am, Branko Vukelic <bg.bra...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 1:09 AM, Lorin Rivers <lriv...@mosasaur.com> wrote: > > The number of people that can write code better than I can is close to the > > number of people who CAN write code… > > Let me share an anecdote from where I work. One of the IT staff here > fiddles with VB from time to time. He does consider himself an > intermediate programmer. So he comes to me from time to time to ask > for advice on how to do this or that. And each time, my first response > is: "Try to google out a library that does that." It almost always > turns out that there is (a) no such library shared on the net, or (b) > you have to pay for it. That's the kind of eco system he's in. We all > know how beautifully different that is with open-source software. > > So, it's not just writing code. It's about "I'm not the brightest kid > on the block, and there might be others, who are smarter, and have > maybe shared their smarts with the rest of us." And you download that > lib, and you learn the API, read the source, and learn a thing or two. > So you don't always have to write better code than others. > > Having said all of above... I've tried Ruby, Erlang, VB, Python, a > little bit of C. You always learn a few things by just trying to get > something working in any environment, and you can use that knowledge > to advance your understanding of the tool you chose. In other words, a > little experimenting with .NET won't hurt you a bit. If I'm not > mistaken, there's "express" version of whatever tool Microsoft offers, > and you can use that to educate yourself. See how it works and define > your arguments against it with something to back it up. And MSDN is a > fine piece of knowledge base, too, just to be fair. I've learned a lot > from it alone back when I didn't know how to google for stuff. > > -- > Branko Vukelić > > bg.bra...@gmail.com > stu...@brankovukelic.com > > Check out my blog:http://www.brankovukelic.com/ > Check out my portfolio:http://www.flickr.com/photos/foxbunny/ > Registered Linux user #438078 (http://counter.li.org/) > I hang out on identi.ca:http://identi.ca/foxbunny > > Gimp Brushmakers Guildhttp://bit.ly/gbg-group
