[Tutor] Learning Programming

[Jean Montambeault]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Eve Kotyk" <e.kotyk@shaw.ca>
To: "Tutor" <tutor@python.org>

> I have two questions:
>
> 1)  What is a reasonable length of time in which to learn a programming
> language ?(I'm a little disheartened at my prgress).

What about a lifetime ? I don't think that anybody can truly say that they
ever know everything there is about the job. This said I don't know if you
intend to become a pro (then go to school and you'll easily see if you
compare to your peers) or an amateur (looks that way) like me. In the second
case : just enjoy yourself, don't stress and if one day, one month or one
year you don't feel like programming do whatever else pleases you.
>
>
> 2)  I think I would learn more quickly if I had a project to work
> on...how do you choose a project?

I think that it is important that you do things that you like, don't you ? I
like computer graphics and computer animation. Since I use Blender and that
it has Python as a scripting language I mostly write small plug-ins to do
special things.
I might try to do the same for The Gimp one day.
I don't know you but here are some examples :
    - it's fairly easy to write a surprisingly sophisticated text editor
using the power of the text widget in Tkinter. There's tons of them and good
ones at that but there's always room for something specialized.
    - you could elaborate some personnal database scheme for receipes, CDs
or whatever.
    - if you like web programming Python can help you greatly.
    - use Python instead of bash programming.
    - whatever you feel like pretty much.

Have a look at the Useless Python or the Vaults of Parnassus to see what
other people like to program.

    This helps ?

    Jean M.


>
>
> --
>
> ekotyk
>
> http://members.shaw.ca/e.kotyk/virtualstudio.htm
>
> _______________________________________________
> Tutor maillist  -  Tutor@python.org
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor