Perl's documentation come of age

[Steve Holden]

Jeremy Jones wrote:
> Ed Hotchkiss wrote:
> 
> 
>>I'm new to Python, not programming. I agree with the point regarding 
>>the interpreter. what is that? who uses that!? Why are most examples 
>>like that, rather than executed as .py files?
> 
> 
> I think showing examples at the Python interpreter prompt is *very* 
> helpful and IMHO a preferred method in plenty of cases.  If I'm showing 
> someone a piece of code that returns some object the type of which 
> you're not really that familiar with, would you rather be running it in 
> a script, or on a command prompt (or, my preference is to either copy 
> and paste the example to a script an run it with ``python -i`` or paste 
> it to an edit in IPython)?  With IPython (or vanilla Python interpreter 
> with parse-and-bind tab completion turned on), you can inspect the 
> object quite easily.  Again, IMHO, much easier than from a script.
> 
> 
>> 
>>Another problem that I have (which does get annoying after awhile), is 
>>not using foo and bar. Spam and Eggs sucks. It's not funny, although 
>>Monty Python does rock. Why not use silly+walks instead.
> 
> 
> Eh.  Life's too short for me to get up in a roar about such as this.  
> And Python's too good of a language for me to be overly bothered by 
> example naming conventions.  YMMV.
> 
Jim Hugunin's keynote speech at this year's PyCon was accompanied by a 
projection if his interactive interpreter session, and I know I wasn't 
alone in finding this a convincing example of Microsoft's (well, Jim's, 
really) full integration of Python into the .net framework.

Modules are good, but the interactive interpreter is a brilliant way to 
show off what modules can do.

As for "Why not foo and bar rather than spam and eggs?", all I can think 
of to say is "Get over it".

regards
  Steve
-- 
Steve Holden       +44 150 684 7255  +1 800 494 3119
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PyCon TX 2006                          www.pycon.org