Opinions on Python?
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I've been browsing the forums here for a couple months and have noticed lots of references to C/C++, Java, VB, and C#. I've seen little to no mention of Python. I'm curious if anyone has any opinions on it as a language - how it rates compared to the ones above, usefulness, robustness, any quality you care to mention. The university I got my CS degree from recently introduced Python as a first programming language to focus on teaching concepts rather than syntax, considering it's one of the most readable languages I've seen. In my Programming Languages course, we wrote a parser/interpreter for our own subset of Python - in Python. One of my professors (who's Ph.D. is in Mathematics, and taught the Languages course) often writes everything in Python first to test concepts, and then converts to whichever language might better suit the problem (usually something like C for performance purposes). Personally, other than for some coursework, I've had little experience with Python, but I'm looking into getting more familiar with it for building useful utility programs and such. Questions? Answers? Comments? Suggestions? Observations? Etc? - Dybs
Not sure about Python, but after me learning about 15 different programming languages, I am not really up for adding another one to the list when there are plenty of decent ones I am already good at. I've looked at Python and really haven't seen anything new that it could bring to the table for me.
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon
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It's yet another language. :zzz: (I actually interviewed for a Python job a few years back. Apparently I was the only candidate who'd actually written anything in it. I asked them why they didn't use .NET and the hiring manager sheepishly admitted that picking Python was the worse decision they made, but they were stuck with it until they could move it to C#. [They decided to not bother with IronPython, preferring a language with a hiring pool.] I would have gotten hired, but the company was forced to take a guy from a division that was being shut down. I needed the job, but was quite relieved.)
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
Joe Woodbury wrote:
yet another language. [Sleepy]
My thoughts, too, on Python.
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon
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I've been browsing the forums here for a couple months and have noticed lots of references to C/C++, Java, VB, and C#. I've seen little to no mention of Python. I'm curious if anyone has any opinions on it as a language - how it rates compared to the ones above, usefulness, robustness, any quality you care to mention. The university I got my CS degree from recently introduced Python as a first programming language to focus on teaching concepts rather than syntax, considering it's one of the most readable languages I've seen. In my Programming Languages course, we wrote a parser/interpreter for our own subset of Python - in Python. One of my professors (who's Ph.D. is in Mathematics, and taught the Languages course) often writes everything in Python first to test concepts, and then converts to whichever language might better suit the problem (usually something like C for performance purposes). Personally, other than for some coursework, I've had little experience with Python, but I'm looking into getting more familiar with it for building useful utility programs and such. Questions? Answers? Comments? Suggestions? Observations? Etc? - Dybs
dybs wrote:
for building useful utility programs
It's good for that, along with dozens of others. Personally, I wouldn't build a mission critical high volume app with it. I look at it more of a situational quick tool than a programming language. But I've never written more than a couple of simple utilites with it myself.
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I've been browsing the forums here for a couple months and have noticed lots of references to C/C++, Java, VB, and C#. I've seen little to no mention of Python. I'm curious if anyone has any opinions on it as a language - how it rates compared to the ones above, usefulness, robustness, any quality you care to mention. The university I got my CS degree from recently introduced Python as a first programming language to focus on teaching concepts rather than syntax, considering it's one of the most readable languages I've seen. In my Programming Languages course, we wrote a parser/interpreter for our own subset of Python - in Python. One of my professors (who's Ph.D. is in Mathematics, and taught the Languages course) often writes everything in Python first to test concepts, and then converts to whichever language might better suit the problem (usually something like C for performance purposes). Personally, other than for some coursework, I've had little experience with Python, but I'm looking into getting more familiar with it for building useful utility programs and such. Questions? Answers? Comments? Suggestions? Observations? Etc? - Dybs
Personally I like it a lot. I work in video games and 3d simulations and the majority of the work we do is in C/C++ and python. For some of our clients we've written the "main loop" of their system in python and called into C/C++ where it was necessary for performance.
Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage: Pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity. --Lazarus Long
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dybs wrote:
for building useful utility programs
It's good for that, along with dozens of others. Personally, I wouldn't build a mission critical high volume app with it. I look at it more of a situational quick tool than a programming language. But I've never written more than a couple of simple utilites with it myself.
Bert delaVega wrote:
Personally, I wouldn't build a mission critical high volume app with it. I look at it more of a situational quick tool than a programming language.
We use python for mission critical apps at the behest of our clients. It is far more than a toy language, it had things like coroutines and closures well before the .net languages. And, what really matters more so than the language is the "platform or framework", and like .net python has a very robust and complete platform.
Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage: Pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity. --Lazarus Long
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I've been browsing the forums here for a couple months and have noticed lots of references to C/C++, Java, VB, and C#. I've seen little to no mention of Python. I'm curious if anyone has any opinions on it as a language - how it rates compared to the ones above, usefulness, robustness, any quality you care to mention. The university I got my CS degree from recently introduced Python as a first programming language to focus on teaching concepts rather than syntax, considering it's one of the most readable languages I've seen. In my Programming Languages course, we wrote a parser/interpreter for our own subset of Python - in Python. One of my professors (who's Ph.D. is in Mathematics, and taught the Languages course) often writes everything in Python first to test concepts, and then converts to whichever language might better suit the problem (usually something like C for performance purposes). Personally, other than for some coursework, I've had little experience with Python, but I'm looking into getting more familiar with it for building useful utility programs and such. Questions? Answers? Comments? Suggestions? Observations? Etc? - Dybs
I liked it. I think Python has the advantages of Perl (expressive, compact code, easy to learn and efficient to solve simple problems) without the disadvantages of Perl (you can write readable code and don't need to resort to hacks to implement proper Object Oriented techniques). However, I believe that C# (using VisualStudio) is an acceptable substitute to Python. Trully, C# is more verbose, but if you use VS' Intelisense you actually type way faster and get things working very easily. In a Windows environment I can be just as produtive with C# as I was with Perl/Python in an Unix environment.
Of all forms of sexual aberration, the most unnatural is abstinence.
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I've been browsing the forums here for a couple months and have noticed lots of references to C/C++, Java, VB, and C#. I've seen little to no mention of Python. I'm curious if anyone has any opinions on it as a language - how it rates compared to the ones above, usefulness, robustness, any quality you care to mention. The university I got my CS degree from recently introduced Python as a first programming language to focus on teaching concepts rather than syntax, considering it's one of the most readable languages I've seen. In my Programming Languages course, we wrote a parser/interpreter for our own subset of Python - in Python. One of my professors (who's Ph.D. is in Mathematics, and taught the Languages course) often writes everything in Python first to test concepts, and then converts to whichever language might better suit the problem (usually something like C for performance purposes). Personally, other than for some coursework, I've had little experience with Python, but I'm looking into getting more familiar with it for building useful utility programs and such. Questions? Answers? Comments? Suggestions? Observations? Etc? - Dybs
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I've been browsing the forums here for a couple months and have noticed lots of references to C/C++, Java, VB, and C#. I've seen little to no mention of Python. I'm curious if anyone has any opinions on it as a language - how it rates compared to the ones above, usefulness, robustness, any quality you care to mention. The university I got my CS degree from recently introduced Python as a first programming language to focus on teaching concepts rather than syntax, considering it's one of the most readable languages I've seen. In my Programming Languages course, we wrote a parser/interpreter for our own subset of Python - in Python. One of my professors (who's Ph.D. is in Mathematics, and taught the Languages course) often writes everything in Python first to test concepts, and then converts to whichever language might better suit the problem (usually something like C for performance purposes). Personally, other than for some coursework, I've had little experience with Python, but I'm looking into getting more familiar with it for building useful utility programs and such. Questions? Answers? Comments? Suggestions? Observations? Etc? - Dybs
I like Python a lot. I started using it for internal Web applications and now use it for most small projects - I like the mix of a sparse syntax, an interactive prompt, a nice set of libraries and also a reasonable set of 'functional' features (list comprehensions, lambdas etc). An example - I needed to put together something to detect duplicates either within a single directory or between two directories. 20 or so lines of Python later, I've got a re-usable, fast and efficient duplicate detector. I also like the fact that it's as good with COM interfaces as VB. I wrote a little script that would find the best album/artist/track match for a text string within iTunes, using iTunes' COM interface. Easy - I can even use list comprehensions with iTunes COM collections.
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I like Python a lot. I started using it for internal Web applications and now use it for most small projects - I like the mix of a sparse syntax, an interactive prompt, a nice set of libraries and also a reasonable set of 'functional' features (list comprehensions, lambdas etc). An example - I needed to put together something to detect duplicates either within a single directory or between two directories. 20 or so lines of Python later, I've got a re-usable, fast and efficient duplicate detector. I also like the fact that it's as good with COM interfaces as VB. I wrote a little script that would find the best album/artist/track match for a text string within iTunes, using iTunes' COM interface. Easy - I can even use list comprehensions with iTunes COM collections.
I run a 3d design studio using blender 3d and we use python a lot in animation scripts and so forth. It really makes life easier than trying to animate objects by hand.
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It's yet another language. :zzz: (I actually interviewed for a Python job a few years back. Apparently I was the only candidate who'd actually written anything in it. I asked them why they didn't use .NET and the hiring manager sheepishly admitted that picking Python was the worse decision they made, but they were stuck with it until they could move it to C#. [They decided to not bother with IronPython, preferring a language with a hiring pool.] I would have gotten hired, but the company was forced to take a guy from a division that was being shut down. I needed the job, but was quite relieved.)
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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I've been browsing the forums here for a couple months and have noticed lots of references to C/C++, Java, VB, and C#. I've seen little to no mention of Python. I'm curious if anyone has any opinions on it as a language - how it rates compared to the ones above, usefulness, robustness, any quality you care to mention. The university I got my CS degree from recently introduced Python as a first programming language to focus on teaching concepts rather than syntax, considering it's one of the most readable languages I've seen. In my Programming Languages course, we wrote a parser/interpreter for our own subset of Python - in Python. One of my professors (who's Ph.D. is in Mathematics, and taught the Languages course) often writes everything in Python first to test concepts, and then converts to whichever language might better suit the problem (usually something like C for performance purposes). Personally, other than for some coursework, I've had little experience with Python, but I'm looking into getting more familiar with it for building useful utility programs and such. Questions? Answers? Comments? Suggestions? Observations? Etc? - Dybs
I like Python, haven't done much in it and read only half of the book on Python that I bought when I started my first job. The syntax was the biggest advantage for me at the time (I knew some C/C++ before and was working with PHP) - it's very readable even if you're reading someone else's code. Right now I am a web developer and actually have a dilemma - I don't know whether to learn Ruby (and start doing Ruby on Rails) or get back to Python which I already used ages (around 2004) ago and pick up Django... :confused: When I first looked at Ruby's syntax I didn't really like it (and they say it's so readable), it looks kinda like Perl, right? That's where it has some roots in supposedly. Anyone using Django and/or RoR? Which one do you prefer? My dilemma comes from the fact that Ruby has it's 5 minutes right now and is HOT, while Python seems to be in the shadows. I don't know...
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I've been browsing the forums here for a couple months and have noticed lots of references to C/C++, Java, VB, and C#. I've seen little to no mention of Python. I'm curious if anyone has any opinions on it as a language - how it rates compared to the ones above, usefulness, robustness, any quality you care to mention. The university I got my CS degree from recently introduced Python as a first programming language to focus on teaching concepts rather than syntax, considering it's one of the most readable languages I've seen. In my Programming Languages course, we wrote a parser/interpreter for our own subset of Python - in Python. One of my professors (who's Ph.D. is in Mathematics, and taught the Languages course) often writes everything in Python first to test concepts, and then converts to whichever language might better suit the problem (usually something like C for performance purposes). Personally, other than for some coursework, I've had little experience with Python, but I'm looking into getting more familiar with it for building useful utility programs and such. Questions? Answers? Comments? Suggestions? Observations? Etc? - Dybs
I really like it. Started learning it (besides C++, now Java - which are my main languages) as a "quick scripting" language for throwaway scripts. It took me about 30 minutes to learn the basics and get (kinda) productive in it. The longer and more I'm using it - the better I'm getting it and the more of the (cool) and advanced stuff I'm learning (list comprehensions..).
All the label says is that this stuff contains chemicals "... known to the State of California to cause cancer in rats and low-income test subjects."
Roger Wright
http://www.codeproject.com/lounge.asp?select=965687&exp=5&fr=1#xx965687xx -
I've been browsing the forums here for a couple months and have noticed lots of references to C/C++, Java, VB, and C#. I've seen little to no mention of Python. I'm curious if anyone has any opinions on it as a language - how it rates compared to the ones above, usefulness, robustness, any quality you care to mention. The university I got my CS degree from recently introduced Python as a first programming language to focus on teaching concepts rather than syntax, considering it's one of the most readable languages I've seen. In my Programming Languages course, we wrote a parser/interpreter for our own subset of Python - in Python. One of my professors (who's Ph.D. is in Mathematics, and taught the Languages course) often writes everything in Python first to test concepts, and then converts to whichever language might better suit the problem (usually something like C for performance purposes). Personally, other than for some coursework, I've had little experience with Python, but I'm looking into getting more familiar with it for building useful utility programs and such. Questions? Answers? Comments? Suggestions? Observations? Etc? - Dybs
Python is an interpreted scripting language and thus very different. DO NOT multi thread with it unless you want to lose system performance! On the other hand it is way better than TCL. Since you always need to install packages for it, it is difficult to distribute utilities. A compiled language can be packaged in much better ways. Elaine :rose:
Visit http://www.notreadytogiveup.com/[^] and do something special today.
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I run a 3d design studio using blender 3d and we use python a lot in animation scripts and so forth. It really makes life easier than trying to animate objects by hand.
woohoo for blender! I'm surprised to see another blender enthusiast out here in the code project, even though it's arguably now one of the greatest 3d programs out there (already the greatest 3d open source one). I've used python briefly in blender, and it is "interesting". Anyway, the bottom line is that python--like any other non-"pervasive" language--definitely has its uses. your chances of getting a job by being an expert solely on python are much less than that of VB.NET, C#, C++, Java, etc. This is more or less because existing systems use these more supported/pervasive languages.
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I've been browsing the forums here for a couple months and have noticed lots of references to C/C++, Java, VB, and C#. I've seen little to no mention of Python. I'm curious if anyone has any opinions on it as a language - how it rates compared to the ones above, usefulness, robustness, any quality you care to mention. The university I got my CS degree from recently introduced Python as a first programming language to focus on teaching concepts rather than syntax, considering it's one of the most readable languages I've seen. In my Programming Languages course, we wrote a parser/interpreter for our own subset of Python - in Python. One of my professors (who's Ph.D. is in Mathematics, and taught the Languages course) often writes everything in Python first to test concepts, and then converts to whichever language might better suit the problem (usually something like C for performance purposes). Personally, other than for some coursework, I've had little experience with Python, but I'm looking into getting more familiar with it for building useful utility programs and such. Questions? Answers? Comments? Suggestions? Observations? Etc? - Dybs
I used it very briefly when I was on a Perl project and needed to explore alternatives. I liked what I saw but haven't used it since. It should really be compared to simiar dynamic languages such as Perl and Ruby rather than with C# or Java. Google are heavy Python users. For example, a lot of their online help pages are in Python.
Kevin
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I like Python, haven't done much in it and read only half of the book on Python that I bought when I started my first job. The syntax was the biggest advantage for me at the time (I knew some C/C++ before and was working with PHP) - it's very readable even if you're reading someone else's code. Right now I am a web developer and actually have a dilemma - I don't know whether to learn Ruby (and start doing Ruby on Rails) or get back to Python which I already used ages (around 2004) ago and pick up Django... :confused: When I first looked at Ruby's syntax I didn't really like it (and they say it's so readable), it looks kinda like Perl, right? That's where it has some roots in supposedly. Anyone using Django and/or RoR? Which one do you prefer? My dilemma comes from the fact that Ruby has it's 5 minutes right now and is HOT, while Python seems to be in the shadows. I don't know...
Pawel Krakowiak wrote:
When I first looked at Ruby's syntax I didn't really like it (and they say it's so readable), it looks kinda like Perl, right?
That's what I thought too (and I hate Perl with a vengeance). All those $! But when I looked closer this wasn't the case. It's actually quite nice. I have it installed at home but to be honest I've barely used it. I have lots of things installed at home gathering dust. :)
Kevin
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Python is an interpreted scripting language and thus very different. DO NOT multi thread with it unless you want to lose system performance! On the other hand it is way better than TCL. Since you always need to install packages for it, it is difficult to distribute utilities. A compiled language can be packaged in much better ways. Elaine :rose:
Visit http://www.notreadytogiveup.com/[^] and do something special today.
Trollslayer wrote:
On the other hand it is way better than TCL.
But, TCL (and the related TK) give rise to the much better pronunciation of Tickle and Tick. OK, granted it sounds like sexual harrasment, but standing in an office saying, "I'm up to here with Tickle" sounds much better than "I'll be playing around with this Python later on".
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
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In my experience, in terms of speed, yes it is. Wrote one app in both languages to run (I think) 10 million simulations of something. So, you'd think the compiled language would win hands down. in fact, Python was nearly twice as fast! Rich
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I like Python, haven't done much in it and read only half of the book on Python that I bought when I started my first job. The syntax was the biggest advantage for me at the time (I knew some C/C++ before and was working with PHP) - it's very readable even if you're reading someone else's code. Right now I am a web developer and actually have a dilemma - I don't know whether to learn Ruby (and start doing Ruby on Rails) or get back to Python which I already used ages (around 2004) ago and pick up Django... :confused: When I first looked at Ruby's syntax I didn't really like it (and they say it's so readable), it looks kinda like Perl, right? That's where it has some roots in supposedly. Anyone using Django and/or RoR? Which one do you prefer? My dilemma comes from the fact that Ruby has it's 5 minutes right now and is HOT, while Python seems to be in the shadows. I don't know...
Ruby is an over-hyped toy. Don't go for the popular language, go for the one with a proven track record. P.S: Guess what language had a bunch of UGLY vulnerabilities[^] lately (and the patch was segfaulting). This is not the first time either.
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I've been browsing the forums here for a couple months and have noticed lots of references to C/C++, Java, VB, and C#. I've seen little to no mention of Python. I'm curious if anyone has any opinions on it as a language - how it rates compared to the ones above, usefulness, robustness, any quality you care to mention. The university I got my CS degree from recently introduced Python as a first programming language to focus on teaching concepts rather than syntax, considering it's one of the most readable languages I've seen. In my Programming Languages course, we wrote a parser/interpreter for our own subset of Python - in Python. One of my professors (who's Ph.D. is in Mathematics, and taught the Languages course) often writes everything in Python first to test concepts, and then converts to whichever language might better suit the problem (usually something like C for performance purposes). Personally, other than for some coursework, I've had little experience with Python, but I'm looking into getting more familiar with it for building useful utility programs and such. Questions? Answers? Comments? Suggestions? Observations? Etc? - Dybs
A very good first programming language; enforces good habits and very readable. Also good for web applications, IMHO.