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I feel Python changes and have changed too much to be a good introduction language anymore. It is not possible for a from zero beginner to read ordinary Python

I feel Python changes and have changed too much to be a good introduction language anymore. It is not possible for a from zero beginner to read ordinary Python code with decorators, generators or what not and understand it. Way too many concepts. It is being choose by intertia at this point and have been ruined for the original target user by former target users who are now professional programmers using it at work.

int_19h 4y ago
A zero beginner doesn't need to read ordinary Python code with decorators etc. The beauty of Python as a teaching language is that none of those things are necessary to explain or handwave to write simple apps that just input and print strings and numbers - which is just enough to teach basic concepts like conditionals, loops, functions etc. For bonus points, it even has turtle graphics out of the box, which is an excellent visual explainer for more advanced concepts like recursion. And when they've learned the basics on toy stuff and want to start writing real-world apps, that is when you explain decorators, generators etc. And yet they don't have to switch to a whole new language - all the basics they've learned still work exactly as they did before.
musingsole 4y ago
MicroPython or CircuitPython have become better entry points than the full language. Python grew up and has been chosen to solve a lot of complex, important problems. This has lead to the language ballooning to become not just good but excellent for those problems (data science). Some of it might be fluff; much of it might not be relevant to your style or problem space.
- rightbyte 4y ago
  Ye for the professional programmers using Python I guess the changes are welcome. It is easier to keep up with additions over time rather than getting them all at once. C++ has the same problem, but it's selling point has never been easy to use.
  - TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
    I'm one of those people who worry that Python - which used to be pretty accessible - is heading in the same direction as C++, and will be buried under archaeological layers of cruft and obscurity. 2.x and 3.x seem to be diverging philosophically, and I'm not convinced that's a good thing.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    C++ during the 1990's was easy enough to be learnt by high school kids.
Merrill 4y ago
Ease of use and ease of learning are often at odds with performance. A go-kart is easier to learn and to drive than a Formula 1 car.
- tyingq 4y ago
  Throwing money/time/effort at it sometimes changes things. Javascript and PHP do pretty well on some specific workloads now for example.
- somat 4y ago
  Some of the best drivers started out in go-karts, something about the feel of the road and getting the most out of such a limited vehicle. I would not call python a go-kart I would call python a mini-van. Boring and looked down upon, but is the best vehicle around for doing your daily activities in.
nicoco 4y ago
Large code bases are always going to be hard to read for beginners. As an introduction language, I don't see why you would need to use decorators, generators or anything? You don't need to learn control flow, functions, variables, etc. You can perfectly write python without all the fancy stuff. In fact, there are quite a lot of data scientists who are paid to write python and don't know the first thing about concepts as seemingly basic as classes.
- wiseowise 4y ago
  > I don't see why you would need to use decorators, generators or anything? You don't need to learn control flow, functions, variables, etc. I think the point here, is that when beginners start exploring what's out there in "professional" lands they'll quickly discover that they don't know Python at all, because they were using this primitive subset of a language.
  - lagt_t 4y ago
    But you always start by using a primitive subset of a language.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    But in what language is that not true? You start learning any language by pieces, and just because you know 10% of the language doesn't mean you're ready to write it professionally, this is true for any language.
    - pen2l 4y ago
      > and just because you know 10% of the language doesn't mean you're ready to write it professionally I don't see why not. Plenty of folks learn on the job, including new languages, and the way things work out you might end up implementing some things sort of by kitbashing, knowing relatively little of the concrete details that you end up learning completely more later on. I do this all the time.
    - ceres 4y ago
au8er 4y ago
I feel like python has never been a good introduction language. It is simply too abstract and hides too many details that are often required in other languages (Python is simply too flexible). It is good to learn if you are only scripting or calling library API, but I feel like it is a poor starting point if the goal is to transition into languages with more rigid structures such as C++.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  Python is a good learning language precisely because it hides those details. This allows people to the learn the basics like variables, loops, strings, etc without getting overwhelmed with too much at once. This absolutely provides a good foundation to learn lower level concepts later, although going bottom-up and starting with a language like C is also a valid path. It’s also worth noting that a large proportion of developers will never learn C++, and will stick to higher level languages their entire career. And another chunk will only learn the lower level stuff much later when they have many years of experience to lean on. If your goal is to immediately become a C++ developer, then you should learn C++, but that isn’t most people learning to program.
  - analog31 4y ago
    >>> Python is a good learning language precisely because it hides those details. This allows people to the learn the basics like variables, loops, strings, etc without getting overwhelmed with too much at once. I wonder if whether this is a blessing or a curse depends on the person who is learning it. For instance, my first language was BASIC in 1981, and so my gut reaction to discussions about learning languages is that BASIC lets you at least imagine the workings of the machine that's running your program. The teacher can draw boxes on the blackboard to explain 10 LET X = X + 1 And we weren't far from the machine. There were not very many turtles on the way down to the level of logic gates. I also learned how a microprocessor worked, reading books as a high school kid, and articles in Byte Magazine, something that would be laughable for today's big CPU's. That's a bottom-up approach. For others, a top-down approach might be better, e.g., seeing mathematical equations develop, in beautiful notation, without caring what the machine is doing under the hood. Another comment in this thread mentions the ability to read code. Python has sprawled. I've been coding in Python for 10 years (as a "scientific" programmer) and recently took a Python skills quiz. I mentor beginners. Yet I scored barely at the top of "average." I can't read the code that's in a lot of the more elaborate Python packages. A problem is motivating people to learn a learning language when they know that they'll outgrow it.
pjmlp 4y ago
Many of those concepts were already present in the language for the last 20 years.
isitmadeofglass 4y ago
> It is not possible for a from zero beginner to read ordinary Python code with decorators, generators or what not and understand it. Having taught beginners both python and other languages, I’d say it’s significantly easier to teach decorators than it is to teach higher order functions normally. Because in python the students have already seen, used and understood what the cache decorator does before we even touch the concept of a function returning another function, which they always need some time to grok, both in python and other languages. As for generators I’ve never seen anyone struggle with them. What do you find difficult to understand about generators?
- Too 4y ago
  Generators have a few footguns even for seasoned developers, calling len(mygen) or mygen[4] works, but after that it's empty when trying to iterate it. Particularly problematic is when someone adds a log of the generator content, exhausting it before before it is used. All this leads to people shotgunning mygen=list(mygen) on everything, without understanding what really happens. How one could solve this i don't really know, generators are such useful concept that you can't really remove them either, and you still want them to be compatible everywhere other lists and iterables are. Even with type hints, it's not exactly obvious when you type the code whether a certain variable is a generator or a concrete list, both of them mostly adhere to the same protocol.
nazgulsenpai 4y ago
I still love the interactive interpreter. It's such a fantastic, no friction, teaching tool, especially for in person demonstration of fundamentals with immediate feedback. Its been an invaluable tool in showing my daughter (9) concepts I have difficulty describing in a way she can understand.

int_19h 4y ago

A zero beginner doesn't need to read ordinary Python code with decorators etc. The beauty of Python as a teaching language is that none of those things are necessary to explain or handwave to write simple apps that just input and print strings and numbers - which is just enough to teach basic concepts like conditionals, loops, functions etc. For bonus points, it even has turtle graphics out of the box, which is an excellent visual explainer for more advanced concepts like recursion. And when they've learned the basics on toy stuff and want to start writing real-world apps, that is when you explain decorators, generators etc. And yet they don't have to switch to a whole new language - all the basics they've learned still work exactly as they did before.

musingsole 4y ago

MicroPython or CircuitPython have become better entry points than the full language. Python grew up and has been chosen to solve a lot of complex, important problems. This has lead to the language ballooning to become not just good but excellent for those problems (data science). Some of it might be fluff; much of it might not be relevant to your style or problem space.

rightbyte 4y ago
Ye for the professional programmers using Python I guess the changes are welcome. It is easier to keep up with additions over time rather than getting them all at once. C++ has the same problem, but it's selling point has never been easy to use.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  I'm one of those people who worry that Python - which used to be pretty accessible - is heading in the same direction as C++, and will be buried under archaeological layers of cruft and obscurity. 2.x and 3.x seem to be diverging philosophically, and I'm not convinced that's a good thing.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  C++ during the 1990's was easy enough to be learnt by high school kids.

Merrill 4y ago

Ease of use and ease of learning are often at odds with performance. A go-kart is easier to learn and to drive than a Formula 1 car.

tyingq 4y ago
Throwing money/time/effort at it sometimes changes things. Javascript and PHP do pretty well on some specific workloads now for example.
somat 4y ago
Some of the best drivers started out in go-karts, something about the feel of the road and getting the most out of such a limited vehicle. I would not call python a go-kart I would call python a mini-van. Boring and looked down upon, but is the best vehicle around for doing your daily activities in.

nicoco 4y ago

Large code bases are always going to be hard to read for beginners. As an introduction language, I don't see why you would need to use decorators, generators or anything? You don't need to learn control flow, functions, variables, etc. You can perfectly write python without all the fancy stuff. In fact, there are quite a lot of data scientists who are paid to write python and don't know the first thing about concepts as seemingly basic as classes.

wiseowise 4y ago
> I don't see why you would need to use decorators, generators or anything? You don't need to learn control flow, functions, variables, etc. I think the point here, is that when beginners start exploring what's out there in "professional" lands they'll quickly discover that they don't know Python at all, because they were using this primitive subset of a language.
- lagt_t 4y ago
  But you always start by using a primitive subset of a language.
- capableweb 4y ago
  But in what language is that not true? You start learning any language by pieces, and just because you know 10% of the language doesn't mean you're ready to write it professionally, this is true for any language.
  - pen2l 4y ago
    > and just because you know 10% of the language doesn't mean you're ready to write it professionally I don't see why not. Plenty of folks learn on the job, including new languages, and the way things work out you might end up implementing some things sort of by kitbashing, knowing relatively little of the concrete details that you end up learning completely more later on. I do this all the time.
  - ceres 4y ago

au8er 4y ago

I feel like python has never been a good introduction language. It is simply too abstract and hides too many details that are often required in other languages (Python is simply too flexible). It is good to learn if you are only scripting or calling library API, but I feel like it is a poor starting point if the goal is to transition into languages with more rigid structures such as C++.

nicoburns 4y ago
Python is a good learning language precisely because it hides those details. This allows people to the learn the basics like variables, loops, strings, etc without getting overwhelmed with too much at once. This absolutely provides a good foundation to learn lower level concepts later, although going bottom-up and starting with a language like C is also a valid path. It’s also worth noting that a large proportion of developers will never learn C++, and will stick to higher level languages their entire career. And another chunk will only learn the lower level stuff much later when they have many years of experience to lean on. If your goal is to immediately become a C++ developer, then you should learn C++, but that isn’t most people learning to program.
- analog31 4y ago
  >>> Python is a good learning language precisely because it hides those details. This allows people to the learn the basics like variables, loops, strings, etc without getting overwhelmed with too much at once. I wonder if whether this is a blessing or a curse depends on the person who is learning it. For instance, my first language was BASIC in 1981, and so my gut reaction to discussions about learning languages is that BASIC lets you at least imagine the workings of the machine that's running your program. The teacher can draw boxes on the blackboard to explain 10 LET X = X + 1 And we weren't far from the machine. There were not very many turtles on the way down to the level of logic gates. I also learned how a microprocessor worked, reading books as a high school kid, and articles in Byte Magazine, something that would be laughable for today's big CPU's. That's a bottom-up approach. For others, a top-down approach might be better, e.g., seeing mathematical equations develop, in beautiful notation, without caring what the machine is doing under the hood. Another comment in this thread mentions the ability to read code. Python has sprawled. I've been coding in Python for 10 years (as a "scientific" programmer) and recently took a Python skills quiz. I mentor beginners. Yet I scored barely at the top of "average." I can't read the code that's in a lot of the more elaborate Python packages. A problem is motivating people to learn a learning language when they know that they'll outgrow it.

pjmlp 4y ago

Many of those concepts were already present in the language for the last 20 years.

isitmadeofglass 4y ago

> It is not possible for a from zero beginner to read ordinary Python code with decorators, generators or what not and understand it. Having taught beginners both python and other languages, I’d say it’s significantly easier to teach decorators than it is to teach higher order functions normally. Because in python the students have already seen, used and understood what the cache decorator does before we even touch the concept of a function returning another function, which they always need some time to grok, both in python and other languages. As for generators I’ve never seen anyone struggle with them. What do you find difficult to understand about generators?

Too 4y ago
Generators have a few footguns even for seasoned developers, calling len(mygen) or mygen[4] works, but after that it's empty when trying to iterate it. Particularly problematic is when someone adds a log of the generator content, exhausting it before before it is used. All this leads to people shotgunning mygen=list(mygen) on everything, without understanding what really happens. How one could solve this i don't really know, generators are such useful concept that you can't really remove them either, and you still want them to be compatible everywhere other lists and iterables are. Even with type hints, it's not exactly obvious when you type the code whether a certain variable is a generator or a concrete list, both of them mostly adhere to the same protocol.

nazgulsenpai 4y ago

I still love the interactive interpreter. It's such a fantastic, no friction, teaching tool, especially for in person demonstration of fundamentals with immediate feedback. Its been an invaluable tool in showing my daughter (9) concepts I have difficulty describing in a way she can understand.