[Tutor] New programmer, need some help getting started on my first project

Bob Gailer bgailer at alum.rpi.edu
Fri May 19 20:23:12 CEST 2006


Terry Carroll wrote:
> On Thu, 18 May 2006, Chris Delgado wrote:
>
>   
>> Kent, 
>>
>> So if you have just been reading, I suggest you try writing a few small 
>> programs as warmups."
>>
>> I think you are right on the money here. I need to write some more
>> simple stuff. 
>>     
>
> Chris, I'd also suggest that, once you have a few toy programs (like your 
> coin-tosser) under your belt, you find some *small* task that you actually 
> want to accomplish, and use Python for that.
>
> It's both motivating and satisfying to address some real-life need you 
> have, rather than some arbitrary assignment from a book.
>
> I think my very first Python program was to do something like take a 
> comma-separated list of MP3 files, with the directory name in a form that 
> includes artist name and album or collection, and format it as a 
> hierarchical list, because I wanted to see it that way.
>
> It was more fun to work on a program that actually did something I wanted, 
> and I had a purpose in writing it beyond just learning Python.

My first "real" program was an interface to an Oracle application that 
included generating anonymous PL/SQL blocks, passing them to Oracle, 
retrieving results, launching and monitoring Oracle background 
processes. A rather daunting task, but it was fun, relatively easy in 
Python, and certainly helped me get into Python.

The hardest part was wading thru Oracle tech support, and dealing with 
error messages such as "invalid type or number of parameters" in a call 
that involved many parameters. :'(

-- 
Bob Gailer
510-978-4454



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