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Python was originally a teaching programming language. You know, for kids and first-year students, as a replacement for BASIC. Now that we use it for building

Python was originally a teaching programming language. You know, for kids and first-year students, as a replacement for BASIC. Now that we use it for building enterprise crap it has turned into some sort of lovecraftian rube goldberg machine, but around the Python 1.5 days it was, indeed, a nice and simple no-nonsense language.

moi2388 2y ago
If it was used only as that, for perhaps the first introductory course, I think it’d be great. That’s exactly the scope it should be used in, and no further
- icedchai 2y ago
  How do you feel about other scripting languages? Ruby? PHP? Perl?
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    They should be mostly used for scripting exactly, not full blow applications, unless a JIT is part of the story. Which incidentally, Facebook had to spend millions of dollars adding one into PHP, across multiple attempts. And Shoppify is doing the same to Ruby. Because as Facebook pointed out during their efforts, every single 1% performance improvement, represents millions of saved dollars in infrastructure costs.
edanm 2y ago
> Python was originally a teaching programming language. You know, for kids and first-year students, as a replacement for BASIC. Ummm, what? I don't think that's true.
- namaria 2y ago
  I'm with Dijkstra on this one. Teaching people these simplified languages full of magic and which encourage all sorts of bad design decisions by omission cripples their mind.
  - edanm 2y ago
    If you're referring to Python, I wouldn't call it simplified, and considering that it is one of the most used languages in real-world production code, then I definitely don't think there's any problem with teaching it. I also don't know the context of what Dijkstra said, but in general I think teaching people simplified things as a first step is often a great pedagogic method, so this sounds... wrong?
    - namaria 2y ago
      I think there's a problem in starting with such languages. It fills the mind with vague and subtly wrong mental models that are hard to change. I know a lot of developers who can't see beyond the text box where they have to get some code to run and that's detrimental to them and to the industry. I believe that teaching should focus on fundamentals and how to compose them rather then straight to 'let's write some code in this box and get some magical results, you don't need to know more than that'.
pjmlp 2y ago
And with exception of 8 bit home computers, at least BASIC had compilers.

moi2388 2y ago

If it was used only as that, for perhaps the first introductory course, I think it’d be great. That’s exactly the scope it should be used in, and no further

icedchai 2y ago
How do you feel about other scripting languages? Ruby? PHP? Perl?
- pjmlp 2y ago
  They should be mostly used for scripting exactly, not full blow applications, unless a JIT is part of the story. Which incidentally, Facebook had to spend millions of dollars adding one into PHP, across multiple attempts. And Shoppify is doing the same to Ruby. Because as Facebook pointed out during their efforts, every single 1% performance improvement, represents millions of saved dollars in infrastructure costs.

edanm 2y ago

> Python was originally a teaching programming language. You know, for kids and first-year students, as a replacement for BASIC. Ummm, what? I don't think that's true.

namaria 2y ago
I'm with Dijkstra on this one. Teaching people these simplified languages full of magic and which encourage all sorts of bad design decisions by omission cripples their mind.
- edanm 2y ago
  If you're referring to Python, I wouldn't call it simplified, and considering that it is one of the most used languages in real-world production code, then I definitely don't think there's any problem with teaching it. I also don't know the context of what Dijkstra said, but in general I think teaching people simplified things as a first step is often a great pedagogic method, so this sounds... wrong?
  - namaria 2y ago
    I think there's a problem in starting with such languages. It fills the mind with vague and subtly wrong mental models that are hard to change. I know a lot of developers who can't see beyond the text box where they have to get some code to run and that's detrimental to them and to the industry. I believe that teaching should focus on fundamentals and how to compose them rather then straight to 'let's write some code in this box and get some magical results, you don't need to know more than that'.

pjmlp 2y ago

And with exception of 8 bit home computers, at least BASIC had compilers.