Looking for Python programmers--where to search?

[Nicholas Geovanis]

On Fri, 25 Aug 2000, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:

> On Fri, 25 Aug 2000 14:52:38 -0700, Eric Lee Green <eric at estinc.com>
> declaimed the following in comp.lang.python:
> 
> > So far he has been plugging away for two weeks, and still takes 2 days to do
> > what I could do in the course of an hour, and still has trouble dealing with
> > the fact that he can, e.g.,  operate upon lists without having to write oodles
> > of list-manipulation code and etc. (e.g. there was one database operation
> > where the most efficient way of handling things was to query all the data out
> > into one list then iterate over the list with a 'for' loop, and he went
> > through a bunch of hooplah with cursors to implement the same thing -- because
> > in "C", you can't work on lists without writing a bunch of code). My only
> > conclusion can be that while C++ programmers can learn the basics of the
> > Python language in an hour, it takes them a lot longer than an hour to be able
> > to write real programs in a timely manner using the language.
> >
> 	Ah, a coding specialist instead of a software engineer <G> I
> sometimes think schools shouldn't let a student write a program until
> /after/ a few courses on algorithms, language design, etc. <G>

Roger that.

This is a common technique for list-handling which appears in, oh, several
dozen programming languages. Sounds like this candidate hasn't used any of
them. This isn't bad in itself, if what you REALLY wanted was a C
programmer (give or take a ++). But what sane programmer writes in only
one language?

My uncle describes himself as a C++ programmer (in fairness, he does
electronics design work too), and writes code for real-time control
of rolling-mills and other big, dangerous machinery. But he has no idea
what any of the following terms mean: inheritance, polymorphism,
overloading. How many other C++ programmers are in the same boat?

>  >   wlfraed at ix.netcom.com  | Wulfraed  Dennis Lee Bieber  KD6MOG <

* Nick Geovanis 
| IT Computing Svcs
| Northwestern Univ
| n-geovanis at nwu.edu
+------------------->