Re: Re: Re PDXLUG mbox to Maildir

On Tue, 2004-05-04 at 09:20, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
> But you have to *know* that "%" does this "magical sprintf as syntax".
> That's not intuitive, no matter how brainwashed you are into thinking
> otherwise.

Indeed, you are correct.  One also must know about data types, variables
and many other fundamental programming concepts before one can program
with *any* level of proficiency.  

Even a very basic assignment in Python, such as:

foo = []

takes many things for granted, such that the programmer be sophisticated
enough to appreciate what a list/collection is and how to use it.

I, for one, don't generally advocate learning Python as a first
language.  To me, it's much more powerful as a second, third, or nth
language.  Python borrows liberally from many programming traditions
(much like some another P language I could name) and you stand the
greatest chance of understanding and appreciating those conventions if
you were exposed to where they came from.

> 
> I find Python just as unreadable relative to my learning of it as most
> people find Perl unreadable relative to their learning of it.

And I find Greek unreadable relative to my learning of it, though I
recognize it as an expressive language for those who know it.  Perhaps
if I spent more time learning it, I might come to prefer it over
English.  But I'll probably never know.


> Nor do I consider "+" as an intuitively normal "string concat"
> operator.

And just what *would* you expect to happen when a string constant and a
string variable have a + operator between them?  Bitwise arithmetic? :-)


> My point is that Python and Perl both have learning curves,

Point well taken... but was it ever in dispute?

>  and I'm
> tired of people saying "well, Python is obvious".  It's not.

I'm tired of that too... some of us are trying to make a living doing
this.  :-)  

Python is an extremely elegant and (IMO) intuitive language... but
instructing computers is still a non-obvious task requiring expertise
and insight.  Like just about anything of any complexity, there is more
than one valid way to approach the problem.

Dylan