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The best known programming language in the 1980s, BASIC, had a FOR that was limited to counting. A lot of people without formal CS education would think Python’
by rbanffy 4mo ago
The best known programming language in the 1980s, BASIC, had a FOR that was limited to counting. A lot of people without formal CS education would think Python’s for can go over a finite set of things and live happily at that level of abstraction without ever needing to peek under the bonnet and learn how iterators work (in Python).
- klibertp 4mo agoSure. But you know, from personal experience, you can be a happy BASIC user writing simple games without knowing about the existence of arrays. It's a bit hard, but nothing copy & paste couldn't defeat. And while learning about `DIM` was quite a breakthrough for my 8 y.o. self, I'm not sure I'd welcome an article about it on HN's front page. The same is true for iterator protocols: as noted in my other comment, they have existed since 1975 in almost the same form (with a few closely related variants). It's not easy to find a mainstream language that doesn't support them "since forever" (in "tech years"). They're just not news, no matter how you slice it.
- rbanffy 4mo agoStill, the average programmer lives happily without ever looking what’s under the syntax of their language. While I agree the mode here on HN is not the average programmer, there are always newcomers and larvae who need our support to develop fully into adult developers.