John Connors wrote: > G'day, > > While the list is kind of slow I thought I'd post a few thoughts on a couple > of things in Python that bug me. They're not really questions but maybe > someone can help me understand.
Maybe I can give you some not-really answers ;) > > The first one is lists... I can't for the life of me understand why a list > starts at zero. In everything else in life other than programming the 1st > item in a list is always 1. Many programming languages start indexes at zero. It makes sense if you think of a list being stored as sequential values in memory, and the index as the offset from the start of the list. (This is in fact how arrays are often implemented.) > > The next thing I don't understand is why the last number in a range is not > used... > > For a in range(1,6): > print a, > > 1 2 3 4 5 > > Once again it defies the logic of everything else we are taught in life. This actually prevents many types of errors. Alex Martelli has a good explanation here (also see his other posts in the same thread): http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/579b53de640190cd > > The 3rd whinge is object oriented programming. I think I understand the > principle behind OOP but in practise, to me, it just makes programs jumbled, > unreadable and bloated. Just about every summary I have read on Python says > it is designed to have a simple syntax and is easy to learn. As a beginner I > can look at Python code and have a very good idea of what is happening and > why unless it's written in OOP style in which case I have no idea. OOP does take some getting used to, it is a different way of thinking about the structure of a program. Done badly, it is a good way to make a mess. Done well, it is a tool for creating a highly modular program where the responsibilities of each piece are well defined. Kent _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
