Solutions for finding the 1000th prime

[Peter Otten]

Neal wrote:

> I'm doing the MIT OpenCourseWare class that this assignment hails from
> and I don't doubt that its a relatively common assignment. Upon
> searching for it for some ideas of why my program wouldn't work one of
> the top results is this a thread from this group full of derision and
> sarcasm. Believe me I understand that the people here don't want to do
> another person's homework but for someone who isn't going to be coding
> for a living or is a hobbyist like I am, there could be some useful
> information. Eventually I figured out what I was doing wrong, and I
> was hoping to add some insight. At this point in the lectures about
> all we've learned to deal with as far as commands are: while, if,
> else, elif and some boolean operators.

I'd like to bring your attention to my contribution to the above-mentioned 
thread.

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2009-November/1226626.html

I posted it late in the thread's life because like you I disliked the 
direction the "discussion" was taking.

My answer is not so much about an efficient solution to the actual problem, 
but more about how to approach a programming problem that initially seems to 
be over your head.

As a long time reader I can confirm that if you show that you have made a 
minimum effort to solve even "homeworky" problems you usually get 
constructive hints on comp.lang.python. There is also a mailing list

http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor

for the absolute beginner.

Peter