[Tutor] learner [what is Python good for?]

[Danny Yoo]

On Sun, 27 Jan 2002 alan.gauld@bt.com wrote:

>  >  i would like to know how to write a program.
>  >  i am relatively new to computers and have no prior programming
> experience. 
>  
> Thats the target for my web tutor (url below) 
> 
> i would like to know if python is a good place to begin and why? 
> 
> I answer that.
> 
>  
> what type of applications can the python language be used for? 


The Useless Python web site collects a lot of good examples of things
people here have written in Python:

    http://www.lowerstandard.com/python

Python's good for a lot of recreational programming, because it's fairly
easy to play around with it in its interactive interpreter.  Someone has
even written a library to make games:

    http://pygame.org


If you want code of a more serious slant, the Vaults of Parnassus is
another repository:

    http://www.vex.net/parnassus


If you're a scientist or a biologist, you may be interested in these
links:

    http://www.scipy.org/
    http://biopython.org/


In short, you can do a lot with Python.  *grin* But to be fair, I have to
say that you can do a lot with any computer language.  What makes Python
special, what has attracted people from diverse backgrounds to use it, is
knowing that learning Python isn't too bad.


If you're interested in learning more, you can take a look at:

    http://python.org/Newbies.html

for a collection of tutorials that People have written for Python.  
Alan's tutorial is also linked from this web site.  If you have questions
while going through any of those tutorials, please feel free to ask your
questions.  We'll do what we can to make things less confusing.



By the way, your email client is sending messages as HTML text, but not
everyone here is using a client that strips off HTML.  Can you change your
email client to send just plain text?  That will make it easier for people
to read your questions.


Best of wishes!