[Chicago] How did you learn Python?
Clyde Forrester
ccf3 at mindspring.com
Sat Mar 7 00:54:06 CET 2009
1. Self-taught. I've always had trouble with courses. ADD. Odd learning
style.
1bis. (Since several people have started mentioning books in answer to
this question.) I was fluent in various BASIC dialects, then learned C,
then learned Perl. Now I'm trying to learn Python, Ruby, Java, C++, etc.
ad nausium. I like the O'Reilly "Learning [foo]" books. I supplement
them with random site results from Google searches.
2. Not in the last couple of decades. I'm too much of a hands-on,
practical learner. I tend to want to learn about what really, actually
works, rather than learning to regurgitate pat answers or vague
theories. I don't like to toe the party line, or settle on the one
"true" brand of beer/automobile/OS/language/browser/editor/whatever.
Sorry if I'm ranting.
3. Graduated in back in the olden days. ('82). Haven't felt comfortable
going back to that pressure-cooker.
I've started playing around with various "fasta" (genetics) files,
counting nucleotide bases, looking for motifs, that sort of thing. I
generally try something simple in Perl, and then try it in Python, Ruby,
etc. What I've learned so far involves text-file-in, summary on screen.
I also have some text-file-in, text-file-out applications I play with.
File conversion used to be 90% of my job. I'm also trying to do
text-file-in, pretty analysis picture on screen. For that I expect to
start with Java, and then see which other languages give me a path of
least resistance.
James Snyder wrote:
> This discussion makes me curious about something though...
>
> 1. How many people here started as self-taught Pythonistas vs.
> learning it from some sort of course/workshop/guided instruction?
> 2. Regardless of how you got started, have you taken some
> instruction? Was it useful/helpful?
> 3. Did any of the educational institutions you went to offer any
> python-related classes?
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