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John Connors wrote:
<blockquote cite="midBAY108-F366F209C09EF07BD7642A7BE970@phx.gbl"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">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.
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.
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.
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.</pre>
</blockquote>
Dustin pretty well covered it. I'll add:<br>
<br>
OOP is never necessary. Alan Turing proved that with this theoretial
"Turing Machine". Anything that can be computed can be computed on a
turing machine. BUT doing so can be very difficult to program. So
programming languages with their underlying compilers, assemblers,
translators, runtime engines, etc. were invented to make programming
"easier".<br>
<br>
For me OOP is very helpful to separate data from logic. When I find
myself writing if elif else sequences to distinguish between 2 similar
but not identical collections of data, I (almost) always ask "could
this be a reason for 1 or more subclasses"? Also if I have multiple
instances of the same thing it is a lot easier for me to track the
individual data values in class instances rather than in some sequence
or mapping (the alternative if one does not use classes).<br>
<br>
Welcome to the adventure. You are standing ....<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Bob Gailer
510-978-4454
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