[Tutor] Not Really Questions

[Hugo González Monteverde]

John Connors wrote:

> 
> The first one is lists... I can't for the life of me understand why a list 
> starts at zero. In everything else in life other than programming the 1st 
> item in a list is always 1.
Hi,

Exactly, everything else other than programming. Zero indexed arrays are 
the norm in everything but moronic old VB. I guess it's just a defacto 
standard now.

> 
> The next thing I don't understand is why the last number in a range is not 
> used...
> 
> For a in range(1,6):
>     print a,
> 
> 1 2 3 4 5
> 
This relates to the previous issue. This comes from the fact that

range(3) = [0, 1, 2]

This is extremely useful for iterating indices, and I can suppose that 
when range() was first extended, it had to remain consistent.

> The 3rd whinge is object oriented programming. I think I understand the 
> principle behind OOP but in practise, to me, it just makes programs jumbled, 
> unreadable and bloated. Just about every summary I have read on Python says 
> it is designed to have a simple syntax and is easy to learn. As a beginner I 
> can look at Python code and have a very good idea of what is happening and 
> why unless it's written in OOP style in which case I have no idea.
> 

OOP is a rare beast to me: it makes suitable problems very very easy 
(think about GUI programming without OOP) and unsuitable problems 
extremely convoluted. I guess it's just the fact that it is a paradigm 
and not just a programming technique.

Fortunately, unless other languages which *force* you to use OOP (think 
Java), Python allows you to use at least 3 different paradigms (OOP, 
functional(like Lisp et al) and structured(like Pascal and C))

Just my 2 cents,

Hugo