Re: Scripting (was Re: Python books, literature etc)
Just to kind of get back on topic: Before buying a book or making a terribly large investment, OP should consider the fact that Python 3 is out and gaining some popularity. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Scripting (was Re: Python books, literature etc)
Peter vm...@mycircuit.org wrote in message news:mailman.661.1262978839.28905.python-l...@python.org... Sounds good. Regarding the book's title: is it just me, or are Python programmers in general put off when people call it scripting? I won't attempt a strict definition of the term scripting language, but it seems like non-programmers use it to mean less scary than what you might think of as programming, while programmers interpret it as not useful as a general-purpose language. It took me a while to take scripting seriously. I grew up with Pascal and Eiffel and I found it difficult to appreciate dynamic typing and scripting. The author Langtangen is explaining in detail why he considers scripting useful, in particular he provides an automatic test suite to run different language versions ( perl, python, c, c++) of the same program to compare performance. The results are amazing, in that some of the examples run faster than the C++ version. I think if you can get Python to run fast (compared to compiled languages), then that's scripting (ie. just using it to sequence lots of built-in functions and operations). If it runs a lot slower than those other languages, then you're probably doing some programming. And with programs where the runtime is not significant, it could be either... -- Bartc -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Scripting (was Re: Python books, literature etc)
On Thu, 2010-01-07, Peter wrote: [...] depending on your application domain, I liked: 1) Hans Petter Langtangen: Python Scripting for Computational Science A truly excellent book, not only with respect to Python Scripting , but also on how to avoid paying license fees by using opensource tools as an engineer ( plotting, graphing, gui dev etc ). Very good , pratical introduction to Python with careful and non-trivial examples and exercises. Sounds good. Regarding the book's title: is it just me, or are Python programmers in general put off when people call it scripting? I won't attempt a strict definition of the term scripting language, but it seems like non-programmers use it to mean less scary than what you might think of as programming, while programmers interpret it as not useful as a general-purpose language. /Jorgen -- // Jorgen Grahn grahn@ Oo o. . . \X/ snipabacken.se O o . -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Scripting (was Re: Python books, literature etc)
On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 09:37, Jorgen Grahn grahn+n...@snipabacken.se wrote: Regarding the book's title: is it just me, or are Python programmers in general put off when people call it scripting? I won't attempt a strict definition of the term scripting language, but it seems like non-programmers use it to mean less scary than what you might think of as programming, while programmers interpret it as not useful as a general-purpose language. I dunno... I consider it programming when I'm writing bash scripts. Same with running python scripts. My personal take on it, so YMMV, is that scripting is just a synonym for programming an interpreted language, as opposed to programming (common parlance) which is usually meant writing code for a compiled language (C, C++, VB, etc...) Then again, I also tend to use scripting, coding and programming interchangeably too. And sometimes scripting = just writing a quick and dirty program to do a small task, programming = writing something much larger for long term use. Either way, I'm not offended by any of those terms as they all involve programming, regardless of whether or not someone actually calls it programming. For another analogy, what do they call Chinese food in China? Food. Cheers Jeff -- Ted Turner - Sports is like a war without the killing. - http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/ted_turner.html -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Scripting (was Re: Python books, literature etc)
Jorgen Grahn wrote: On Thu, 2010-01-07, Peter wrote: [...] depending on your application domain, I liked: 1) Hans Petter Langtangen: Python Scripting for Computational Science A truly excellent book, not only with respect to Python Scripting , but also on how to avoid paying license fees by using opensource tools as an engineer ( plotting, graphing, gui dev etc ). Very good , pratical introduction to Python with careful and non-trivial examples and exercises. Sounds good. Regarding the book's title: is it just me, or are Python programmers in general put off when people call it scripting? I won't attempt a strict definition of the term scripting language, but it seems like non-programmers use it to mean less scary than what you might think of as programming, while programmers interpret it as not useful as a general-purpose language. I'd probably say that in scripting, convenience is more important than speed. You don't need to create a project, just put the code into a file and then run it. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Scripting (was Re: Python books, literature etc)
Sounds good. Regarding the book's title: is it just me, or are Python programmers in general put off when people call it scripting? I won't attempt a strict definition of the term scripting language, but it seems like non-programmers use it to mean less scary than what you might think of as programming, while programmers interpret it as not useful as a general-purpose language. It took me a while to take scripting seriously. I grew up with Pascal and Eiffel and I found it difficult to appreciate dynamic typing and scripting. The author Langtangen is explaining in detail why he considers scripting useful, in particular he provides an automatic test suite to run different language versions ( perl, python, c, c++) of the same program to compare performance. The results are amazing, in that some of the examples run faster than the C++ version. I find Python extremly useful as a general purpose language ( its clearly now my prefered one ) and I find it equally useful to develop toy apps in C++, Haskell and Lisp, just to better appreciate the idea of general purpose. For me, it has turned out that the point is not scripting versus not scripting or static versus dynamic typing but having automatic unittests or not having automatic unittests. My most important module is nose for running unittests the easy way. Peter -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Scripting (was Re: Python books, literature etc)
Jorgen Grahn grahn+n...@snipabacken.se writes: Regarding the book's title: is it just me, or are Python programmers in general put off when people call it scripting? I won't attempt a strict definition of the term scripting language, but it seems like non-programmers use it to mean less scary than what you might think of as programming, while programmers interpret it as not useful as a general-purpose language. For me scripting means something like task automation within a given program or environment, in contrast to wring a stand-alone program. Florian -- http://www.florian-diesch.de/software/easygconf/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
