Newbie's rant's and question :) (long post)

[Peter Hansen]

Hendy Teguh wrote:

> first, a little warning, may contain negative comments, this is truly
> my humble opinion, please consider it as a curious comments, not
> flaming or trolling (there're tendency i read on newsgroup (especially
> linux newsgroups), that newbie's opinion are often considered
> trolling, especially from diehard fans :P ). 

Actually, newbie comments are considered trolling most commonly
only when they have been using Python for all of five minutes
(or sometimes two days) and they think they know exactly what
is wrong and how it should be "fixed".  It would be hard to
consider your post a troll, especially since you are clearly not
presenting your position as absolute, but are merely expressing
unhappiness and confusion about your situation.

> 2. so far i learned python, i got the impression that python is more
> like a scripting language than programming since python rely heavily
> on external libraries ... In other word, somehow python is 'teethless'
 > in doing something 'powerful' by itself IMHO.

You have a mistaken impression, I think, based on your relatively
limited experience.  I know you don't know C, but you've doubtless
heard of it and would, I assume, consider it a "real" programming
language (whatever that is to you).  Are you aware that C doesn't
even include *input and output* in the basic language definition?
This and almost everything else of interest is provided only by
external libraries.

Python (and Java, and many many other languages) is no different in
this respect.  The fact that Python packages up so much of its overall
functionality in external libraries is really a strength, not a
weakness, allowing it to change more rapidly over time in response
to changes in its environment.  Look at, for example, the wide
variety of third-party tools for handling XML.  If you were limited
to just what was in the standard library you wouldn't as easily
be able to choose the right tool for the right job, if you had
special needs for example (e.g. performance, or low memory usage).

> I'm planning to write a simple graphic viewer in paralel learning GUI.
> Since python don't support natively jpeg or png (am i right?), do i
> need to find library to read those file 

Yes, this is what you should do.  Few languages have only "native"
support for things like that (nor should they).

> 3. just a curious question, why doesn't python include a basic library
> (GUI for example)? 

It does!  Tkinter is the standard Python GUI, included in the
regular download.

-Peter