Question about learning Python

[dn]

On 08/09/2022 07.15, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Sept 2022 at 05:09, Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 2022-09-07, Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Thu, 8 Sept 2022 at 04:54, Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> If you're a beginning programmer, then IMO learning C first is
>>>> probably detrimental. [...]
>>>
>>> Not as detrimental as starting with BASIC, and then moving on to x86
>>> assembly language, and trying to massage the two together using CALL
>>> ABSOLUTE in order to get mouse input in your GW-BASIC programs.
>>
>> Ah the "good old days".
>>
> 
> Indeed. The 1990s gave me all manner of skills, including the
> aforementioned mouse control in a BASIC program, writing a
> Terminate-and-Stay-Resident program that hooks an interrupt, tricks
> for *not* writing a TSR and still acting like one, building GUIs using
> pixel precision, building GUIs using pixel precision but fully
> automatically, using HTML tables to create layouts.... oh, yes, so
> many skills... To anyone suffering from https://xkcd.com/1479/ right
> now, I can assure you, quite a lot of that knowledge DOES eventually
> become obsolete when better methods come along. It just sometimes
> takes a decade or more.
> 
> (And then occasionally it still haunts you. I'm finding table-based
> layouts in a site that I now have to manage. Eventually I'll fix it
> all, eventually....)

OP: Python!

Python has become one of the most popular first-languages to use in
universities (etc). On-the-ground this varies by country, even by
province/state. However, starting at a higher-level is recommendable -
and should the learner decide that 'this computer stuff is not for me'
(XKCD not withstanding) then the cost of effort-expended will be less.
Also, there are are plenty of coders 'out there' who don't seem to have
learned, or even need, the detail one acquires using a lower-level
language. (no further comment on that!)


TSRs? Now that was an ugly period of history! (trying to make a
single-process operating system do multi-processing - only to find that
many program[me]s assumed they had full use and undisputed control of
the computer. Happy days...)

History has its value. Talking to a group the other day, showed how
IT-skills from patterns (eg Factory, Strategy, Decorator) and paradigms
(eg Modular Programming, Structured Programming) through to
Architectural Principles (eg SOLID) and project management approaches
(eg Waterfall, Agile, SCRUM) all descend from hard-won knowledge and
sometimes bitter-experience. Chunks of which pre-date Dartmouth BASIC,
PCs, mini-computers, and 'family'/standardised-hardware operating systems!

On the other hand, one can start too 'high' or too 'modern'. Like the
person enthusing about MSFT's and AWS' programming AIs, thinking that
such tools will replace programmers (one of the aims of the COBOL
language back in the 1960s). His short-form description spoke volumes:
'it saves anyone from having to look-up Stack Overflow any more' - a
'blind' cut-and-paste prospect that saves the 'author' from the
difficulties of 'learning stuff'; until it is time to, um, learn-stuff -
to know why one needs to learn-stuff BEFORE taking from SO/AI.

-- 
Regards,
=dn