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My main annoyance with Python, as someone who had C++ as his first programming language, is I cannot stand significant whitespace. Really. I know that this is a

My main annoyance with Python, as someone who had C++ as his first programming language, is I cannot stand significant whitespace. Really. I know that this is a petty, peevish, not technically valid reason, but because of that Python irritates me. Still I would not necessarily recommend against it. Dynamic vs static typing, I have programmed in dynamic languages and for small projects there is a benefit to not having to worry about strict typing. For large projects, you end up having to worry about strict typing anyways except manually (of course, there is a degree of this that is always true no matter what, and C++ is not the best example of "strong" typing, but it's a continuum). For that reason, I can definitely see the virtue of static typing for a large project, it does not solve all type related checks, but it at least reduces them, which can save some time.

dllthomas 12y ago
More powerful type systems are great (I'm a happy Haskell programmer much of the time), but there is a surprising amount of safety you can get out of fairly minimal type systems if you figure out how to use them well. For instance, on a recent C project I was able to enforce invariants about what threads could touch what data. C++ has significantly more machinery to leverage.
akulbe 12y ago
What was it like having C++ be your first language? I've heard so many say that is A Bad Idea™. What was your experience? What tools would you recommend, if someone were to start there today? It seems like no matter where you choose to start, learning C or C++ is going to be an inevitable necessity. So I wonder, why not just start there? I would definitely like to talk to you further about it, if you're willing.