[Tutor] new to this

[Gregor Lingl]

A short sunday-morning-reply:

Peter F. Jakubowicz schrieb:

>Hi. I have always wanted to learn to program, and as I have rather a lot of
>time on my hands at the moment, I'm going to do it. Mainly, I decided to
>learn Python 
>
a good idea! Python is a first class learning language!

>because I'm a big Monty Python fan. 
>
this only concerns the emotional component of your project which, of 
course, is an important one

>Also, I have bought two
>Python books, Learn to Program Using Python and Learning Python. 
>
these belong to the best you can have these days - hot from the press is 
Magnus Hetlands Practical Python,
http://www.apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=93
with a sample chaper - seems to be promising!
(see also: his Instant Python: 
http://www.hetland.org/python/instant-python.php

>One
>motivation to learning to program is that I've read a bit about Chaos over
>the years, I am fascinated by that, and I think it would be great to write
>my own programs involving AI, fractals, and what have you. 
>
Python is an all-purpose programming language, well suited for almost 
everything, except - as is often
states - for real-time control of airplanes and nuclear power-plants etc ...

What concerns AI, there  is the new editition of  google-director Peter 
Norvigs and Stuart Russels classic
"leading textbook in Artificial Intelligence", AI: a modern approach, 
now beeing equipped with
Python-Code. See: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~russell/aima.html

About A-Life I don't know nothing, but what should A-Life be without AI?

Now about Chaos: if I hat to stress one weak point of Python for people 
interested in things like you are,
it is the lack of an easy-to-use graphics-output-(software)-device 
(widget) which supports drawing of individual
pixels.  And without this, drawing fractals is cumbersome.The other 
point - that Python performs only
1/10th as fast as for instance C - is of minor importance imho.

One should think, that it were an easy task for one of the thousands of 
smart programmes out there to
provide and glue-in such a widget - preferably for use in Tkinter-Apps, 
but as far as I know, it didn't
happen until now!

Nonetheless: no language surpasses Python for Learnig How To Program! 
What you will have learned,
you will be able to transfer to other languages easily! So don't return 
your books!

Have a nice sunday!
Gregor

>I probably shall
>have lots of annoying questions soon, but at the moment I'm just curious if
>there is any reason not to use Python for writing these sorts of programs.
>I guess I could still return the books if there is a better language for
>this. Regards,
>
>Peter
>
>
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