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Philip Lawatsch wrote:

> Rich Grise wrote:

> If you want to learn C++ then by god dont read any screwed up tutorials
> on the web or any C++ in X days books. If you do so then I'll understand
> your frustration.
>
In the interim, I've discovered Qt. Need I say more? :-)

I think maybe getting ahold of Visual Basic 4 in the mid-1990s when
I bought the W95 machine (RIP) helped with this object stuff. So I've
already got the concepts of forms and buttons and properties and
stuff. I like their signals/connections/slots thing, too. But boy, I
tell you what - just going through their exercises aren't going to
turn me into a C++ programmer! Maybe a passable widget-cutter-and-
paster. ;-) But they do a lot of preliminary stuff that's almost
the opposite of the "enter your program before designing it" approach.

I like it.

Cheers!
Rich

name wrote:

> Am I correct in my belief that some high level languages are actually
> written in C?

Python certainly is! And pertinent to the larger topic at hand, python works
beautifully as an object oriented language and saves gazillions of
development and maintenance hours over something like C++.

I hear Perl is written in C as well.

Jeffrey

On 2004-08-07, Jeffrey Froman <jeffrey@I.slack> wrote:

> Python certainly is! And pertinent to the larger topic at hand, python works
> beautifully as an object oriented language and saves gazillions of
> development and maintenance hours over something like C++.

Glad you brought it up. I'm trying to learn python. Can you recommend a
good book? I'm not great at coding, even though I've some experience with
basic and C. I picked python because, near as I can tell, it's the least
frustrating. Right now I'm flogging Alan Gauld's Learning to Program
tutorial (online) which is pretty good for a hard case like myself, but I'd
like a good treeware reference with all the basics and syntax minutiae I'm
going to need. Any advice? Thnx.

nb

notbob wrote:

> On 2004-08-07, Jeffrey Froman <jeffrey@I.slack> wrote:
>
>> Python certainly is! And pertinent to the larger topic at hand, python
>> works beautifully as an object oriented language and saves gazillions of
>> development and maintenance hours over something like C++.
>
> Glad you brought it up. I'm trying to learn python. Can you recommend a
> good book? I'm not great at coding, even though I've some experience with
> basic and C. I picked python because, near as I can tell, it's the least
> frustrating. Right now I'm flogging Alan Gauld's Learning to Program
> tutorial (online) which is pretty good for a hard case like myself, but I'd
> like a good treeware reference with all the basics and syntax minutiae I'm
> going to need. Any advice? Thnx.
>
> nb

There are a lot of really good Python books.... mainly because Python is
fairly easy to learn because it is so well-thought-out. And because the
language is so elegant and so object oriented, it's kind of hard to write a
'bad book' on it. It's hard to go wrong with most of the books out there. I
like the Learning Python, Second Edition by Mark Lutz, David Ascher tome.

I'm not sure about the future of Python. You are 'stuck' with Tcl as a GUI,
and that's somewhat limiting.... unless things have changed.... it's been a
while since I've toyed with it.

Nice thing about Python, if you learn it, you almost know Java... indeed,
Python is what Java should have been... and might have been if it were not
'owned' by Sun.

You might also take a look at Jython or Ruby. I think the future is with
these. Or maybe get a grasp on C# with the Mono project. If you are a
consultant, there will be work on this platform sooner or later (probably
sooner.... or when they come up with some kind of screen painter a la Visual
Studio w/ ASP.)

When I was at LinuxWorld this week, I had a long talk with the Trolltech (QT)
folks. They have some stuff coming out for web development that will blow you
away.... but I can't speak about it. Very cool, for sure.


ANC

On 2004-08-07, Al C. <no.spam.acanton@adams-blake.no.spam.com> wrote:

> like the Learning Python, Second Edition by Mark Lutz, David Ascher tome.

> ....I was at LinuxWorld this week.....

Me too. Surprisingly, the O'Reilly booth didn't think Learning Python was
worthy of stocking for the show. Go figure. I'll hafta track it down at a
BBB (Big Box Bookstore).

nb

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name wrote:

> Am I correct in my belief that some high level languages are actually
> written in C? If so, that says something, I think. Not sure what...

Yes, but that shows no significance in C, any programming language of
sufficient complexity (ability to support things like loops, branching and
some other stuff) can support any other programming language, it kind of
ties into the whole universal Turing machine concept.

Python could have been written in C++, BASIC, Pascal, Forth etc etc. even in
Python itself. C was probably chosen because its common and the Python
writers knew how to use it.

When programming you choose the best tool for the job. That, in theory,
should boil down to which language helps you represent the data the best
for the work you're doing. Of course other factors come into it, but the
real would is messy like that.

Blumf

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notbob wrote:

> Glad you brought it up.**I'm*trying*to*learn*python.**Can*you*recommen d*a
> good book?**I'm*not*great*at*coding,*even*though*I've*s ome*experience*with
> basic and C.**I*picked*python*because,*near*as*I*can*tell,*i t's*the*least
> frustrating.**Right*now*I'm*flogging*Alan*Gauld's* Learning*to*Program
> tutorial (online) which is pretty good for a hard case like myself, but
> I'd like a good treeware reference with all the basics and syntax minutiae
> I'm going to need.**Any*advice?**Thnx.

For the basics, the Python Tutorial (http://docs.python.org/tut/tut.html) is
good. If you want something more basic and overviewish, then the book
Learning Python from O'reilly (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lpython2/) is
a comfortable read.

I had never seen Alan Gauld's book until you mentioned it, but for something
else in that vein, and with perhaps more python gristle, the online book
"How to Think Like a Computer Scientist" is great
(http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy/).

For the detailed specifics, there's nothing better than the Python Library
Reference itself (http://www.python.org/doc/lib/). Once you get used to the
ideas of importing modules and calling methods from them, this reference
will become the most heavily used bookmark in your repertoire. Sort of the
man pages for python.

Another book from Oreilly that I really like is the Python Cookbook
(http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pythoncook/) which is sort of a Best Of,
Plus Useful Commentary from
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python.

Hope you have fun with python. I sure do.

Jeffrey

Al C. wrote:

> I'm not sure about the future of Python. You are 'stuck' with Tcl as a
> GUI, and that's somewhat limiting.... unless things have changed.... it's
> been a while since I've toyed with it.

There are certainly more GUI options than just Tkinter/Tcl, for example:
wxPython, pygtk, and pyQT.

Jeffrey

Blumf wrote:

> Python could have been written in C++, BASIC, Pascal, Forth etc etc. even
> in Python itself.

In fact, Python *has* been implemented in Python in a project called PyPy!

Jeffrey

On 2004-08-07, Jeffrey Froman <jeffrey@I.slack> wrote:

> For the basics, the Python Tutorial (http://docs.python.org/tut/tut.html) is
[...]

lotta good refs, here. Thanks Jeffrey.

nb