[Zope] Easy my *$%&#@$%!

[David Burton]

As someone who used Delphi and VB/ASP daily, as well as commercial experience with PERL, PHP, C++ and Java, I've taken to looking at as many different 
languages as possible.

Other ones I'm familiar with are Scheme, Prolog, TCL and Ruby.

Without question Python is the easiest language to learn out of all of these - so much so that for personal projects I no longer use any other language, even 
though I am forced to use other languages at work.

Python has a simplicity in its syntax that makes code immediately readable - the indentation means that you can understand your code months later.
The core is kept clean, but there are plenty of standard modules.
There are sophisticated data structures to simplify most tasks compared to the likes of Delphi/C++.
The documentation/books available are excellent, covering all levels of ability (the ActiveState Python Help Files are much better than the Delphi or VB help 
files, for example).
I agree that self takes a little getting used to, and it's one of the few areas where I prefer, say, Ruby's way of doing things.

'context' is a Zope issue - and, frankly it would be bad programming practice to clutter up the global namespace with all the context attributes, etc, and could 
cause problems in knowing what you are referring to.

Both self (Python quirk) and context (Zope feature) are relatively minor compared to the likes of figuring out compilation problems in Java, implementing robust, 
complex data structures in C++, or implementing persistence in most languages.

So, I think there's some very clear reasons why Python is recommended as a teaching language and considered easy to use by all its proponents.

As an aside, if you haven't already, try learning a little more about Python by playing with the Python interpreter outside of Zope. 
This will help make Python a lot more familiar, and even for Zope work, when working out the correct code for a small loop, or string processing or the like, this 
can help you to 'play around' to work out the correct code when your script has an error.

My 2 cents,
David Burton

31/05/2002 08:32:22, John Schinnerer <johnschinnerer@yahoo.com> wrote:

>Aloha,
>
>Be honest now - how many of you saying "python is really easy to learn"
>or equivalent here recently would have said that when you first started
>using it?
>
>I'm not a newbie to programming, and I find python quite cryptic and
>confusing, especially all those mysterious underscores and 'self' and
>'context' and mandatory indentation and so on and on.  And then there's
>trying to understand and use it in/with Zope.  
>
>I'm sure it'll get better for me.  
>
>And, I *sure* am tired of people who already know it well saying over
>and over again how easy it is...for *them*, 'cause it's not for me.
>
>There, I feel much better now.
>
>John S.
>
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