Arthur wrote:
>
[snip]
> One of the things I think that we all like about Python is the fact that a
> lot of attention has been given to how it looks.
>
> Python looks easy.
>
> So what.
Well, this means that it allows the user to focus on the task at hand,
rather than making sure that all extra syntactic material is added.
Allow me to give a non-traditional example.
Richard Pattis' Karel the Robot, designed to teach programming concepts
using the metaphor of making a robot accomplish tasks.
The simplest meaningful program one can ask Karel to do is to
1. Move (take one step)
2. Turn itself off (to avoid wasting energy :-)
BlueJ is a programming environment designed to help *teach* programming
in Java.
Here's what the simplest robot program looks like in the BlueJ environment:
==============================
import kareltherobot.*;
public class Example01 implements RobotTask
{
public void task()
{
Robot Karel = new Robot(1, 1, East, 0);
Karel.move();
Karel.turnOff() ;
}
}
==============================
Contrast with two different versions of that program
using a Python-like environment:
====== non-OOP version======
move()
turn_off()
============================
========= OOP version ======
Reeborg = UsedRobot()
Reeborg.move()
Reeborg.turn_off()
============================
I interpret "Python looks easy" to mean that
Python allows one to focus on the task at hand,
with a gentler learning curve.
Easier to learn often translates with
more ambitious projects being attempted ... and completed!
It worked for me :-)
André
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