A really bad idea.

[Chad Netzer]

On Friday 15 November 2002 05:31, Andrew Koenig wrote:

> Simon> Yeah there's plenty of nice things in the STL, but it's a
> Simon> library, not part of the language.
>
> The distinction isn't particularly important.

True, but I think the original point in the thread was that in describing 
Python, you have to almost immediately talk about tuples, lists, and 
dictionaries, since they are so important to the core language (argument 
passing, multiple argument returns, introspection of objects, namespaces, 
etc.), as well as being immediately useful builtin datatypes for programmers. 
 With C++, you can get away with not discussing many of the standard library 
containers, until after you have discussed references, pointers, 
call-by-value vs. call-by-ref, etc.

So, while your point about knowing and using the standard library is well 
made, it may be an orthogonal one to how early it should be introduced to new 
users of the language (at least, as far as standard containers and such go)

-- 
Bay Area Python Interest Group - http://www.baypiggies.net/

Chad Netzer
cnetzer at mail.arc.nasa.gov