It might be instructive to have someone put together a David-Letterman-style Top 10 List, which would be a list of what someone who is used to programming in another language might notice when first studying Python. Different people would want to put different things on the list, or word things differentluy, but here's an initial shot at it, targeted at newbies to the language.
*"The Top Ten Things We Noticed About Python (coming from, C, C++, C#, Objective-C, Java, ...)" * 1. Indentation matters 2. Colons matter, as you will find out when you forget one 3. There are no traditional C-style arrays, but 4. Python offers lists, tuples and dictionaries 5. The things you put into collections don't all have to be of the same type 6. You don't generally declare your variables, you just start using them 7. You don't generally have to worry about memory management 8. Python is an interpreted language, hence it may be slower, but hey, computers are getting faster, so it may not matter 9. The interactive and web-based help is quite accessible 10. There are a number of very good freely-available third-party libraries (e.g. numpy, scipy ) On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 1:29 PM, Mike Orr <[email protected]> wrote: > To make it clearer: > > Given the interest in "Python 101" in the "November meeting" thread, > shall we make December the Python 101 month? > > Would somebody like to put together a short talk expanding on the Zen > of Python, and focusing on Python techniques from a Java user's > perspective? Are there any other specific questions people would like > to see addressed in the session? > > We generally handle new user inquries by discussion rather than by > talks. That is, we first ask the new users what their specific > questions or areas of interest are, and then address those. But in > this case, a talk on the Zen of Python would be a good starting point, > and one we haven't discussed much at SeaPIG. > > On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 1:27 PM, Mike Orr <[email protected]> wrote: > > Yes. I sometimes type the wrong thing because the names are so similar. > > > > On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 1:25 PM, Melissa Rice <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Mike, > >> > >> Did you mean to say "Python" instead of "Pylons"? > >> > >> > >> Best regards, > >> > >> Melissa > >> ----- > >> Dr. Melissa Rice, PhD > >> Full Moon Technical Solutions, LLC > >> 14202 60th Ave, NW > >> Stanwood, WA 98292-4808 > >> email: mailto:[email protected] > >> phone: 360-654-0709 > >> cell: 425-923-7713 > >> > >> > >> Monday, December 6, 2010, 1:22:48 PM, Mike Orr <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> > >> MO> Given the interest in "Pylons 101" in the "November meeting" thread, > >> MO> shall we make December the Pylons 101 month? > >> > >> MO> Would somebody like to put together a short talk expanding on the > Zen > >> MO> of Python, and focusing on Python techniques from a Java user's > >> MO> perspective? Are there any other specific questions people would > like > >> MO> to see addressed in the session? > >> > >> MO> We generally handle new user inquries by discussion rather than by > >> MO> talks. That is, we first ask the new users what their specific > >> MO> questions or areas of interest are, and then address those. But in > >> MO> this case, a talk on the Zen of Python would be a good starting > point, > >> MO> and one we haven't discussed much at SeaPIG. > >> > > > > > > > > -- > > Mike Orr <[email protected]> > > > > > > -- > Mike Orr <[email protected]> >
