[portland] newcomer introduction

[Dylan Reinhardt]

On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 1:09 AM, Anthony Smith <gods_bud666 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I blew through a couple of books about computer
> languages (one about JAVA and one about Python)
> and it seems to me that modern languages ought
> to be streamlined by the companies that come up
> with the new prototypes - there are simply too many
> new 'features' and 'alternatives' and absolutely way
> too many reserved words in the language.


Well... you are, of course, welcome to write your own modern
programming language to prove that theory.  :-)

In the meantime, it sounds like you are interested in learning how Python works.

I would encourage you to pick a domain you're interested in and look
how Python is being used by experienced practitioners.  A lot of the
best code written is freely available for you to read and learn from.
You may even find extensive discussion and documentation indicating
exactly how and why particular choices were made.

Complexity can be painful to learn, but it often exists for a purpose.
 BASIC might be perfectly good for some tasks, but I'd love to see it
used to create something like Django.

FWIW,

Dylan