On Tue, 2004-05-04 at 09:20, Randal L. Schwartz wrote: > But you have to *know* that "%" does this "magical sprintf as syntax". > That's not intuitive, no matter how brainwashed you are into thinking > otherwise.
Indeed, you are correct. One also must know about data types, variables and many other fundamental programming concepts before one can program with *any* level of proficiency. Even a very basic assignment in Python, such as: foo = [] takes many things for granted, such that the programmer be sophisticated enough to appreciate what a list/collection is and how to use it. I, for one, don't generally advocate learning Python as a first language. To me, it's much more powerful as a second, third, or nth language. Python borrows liberally from many programming traditions (much like some another P language I could name) and you stand the greatest chance of understanding and appreciating those conventions if you were exposed to where they came from. > > I find Python just as unreadable relative to my learning of it as most > people find Perl unreadable relative to their learning of it. And I find Greek unreadable relative to my learning of it, though I recognize it as an expressive language for those who know it. Perhaps if I spent more time learning it, I might come to prefer it over English. But I'll probably never know. > Nor do I consider "+" as an intuitively normal "string concat" > operator. And just what *would* you expect to happen when a string constant and a string variable have a + operator between them? Bitwise arithmetic? :-) > My point is that Python and Perl both have learning curves, Point well taken... but was it ever in dispute? > and I'm > tired of people saying "well, Python is obvious". It's not. I'm tired of that too... some of us are trying to make a living doing this. :-) Python is an extremely elegant and (IMO) intuitive language... but instructing computers is still a non-obvious task requiring expertise and insight. Like just about anything of any complexity, there is more than one valid way to approach the problem. Dylan _______________________________________________ PDXLUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://pdxlug.org/mailman/listinfo/pdxlug
