Andreas Kostyrka wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > > > Barton David wrote: > >> I mean no offense and lay no blame. It's simply that I feel like I've >> been led up a nice gentle beach and suddenly I'm dodging boulders at the >> bottom of a cliff. >> >> I've learned to program with Python (and can hardly conceive of a better >> language to be honest)- and I still think the core language is great: >> elegant, easy to use and brilliantly documented. >> >> But the more I explore the standard library and third party modules, the >> more I run into trouble: a chaotic library structure that seems to >> conceal capabilities rather than promote them, similar modules that >> don't work in similar ways, a whole new level of opaque programming >> lingo that makes me feel excluded, behaviours that I don't understand, >> don't want, and that I can't find documentation to explain, and so on. >> >> I guess it's not Python's fault: I'm guess I'm just too stupid. But I'm >> just getting really disenchanted. Sorry. >> > > No, the Python documentation is sometimes brief. And some places are not > really documented (like some dusty corners in the hotshot profiler). But > OTOH, it's also hard on newbies, because it usually documents but does > not explain what a module does, e.g., it often expects the reader to > know the protocols involved, sometimes it expects the reader to know > computer science basics. >
It seems like new programmers today expect to be spoonfed their information like they were in grammar school. They don't know what it is to hack a Makefile to get a package to compile or break out an RFC to understand a protocol. If you don't understand something and the documentation is lacking, then strap on a pair and read the source, write some test cases, dig a little. In our environment most of the code you'd have to read is just more Python, anyway. Just me being a grouchy old programmer. In my day we had to program in 4 feet of snow, uphill... both ways! > Andreas > > >> >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Kent Johnson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >> Sent: 27 July 2007 13:07 >> To: Barton David >> Cc: tutor@python.org >> Subject: Re: [Tutor] Shelve del not reducing file size >> >> Barton David wrote: >> >>> *sigh* I'm really going off Python. >>> >> In what way is it Python's fault that the dbm database doesn't reclaim >> disk space? >> >> Kent >> >> >> _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
