Any Python Gurus?

[ender_wiggin]

Um, I've decided to learn a real programming language for my senior project. I've mildly procrastinated and I have two weeks left to do something productive.

I was wondering if there are any hardcore programmers out here who I can bounce questions off of.

 

[Psionicist]

learn a real programming language

Visual Basic is pretty much BASIC with flashy point-and-click features and I recommend _against_ learning it, at least for now. It will teach you bad habits and it will probably destroy your view of programming (various reasons).

I recommend Python or C (not C++) as a first programming language. Both are small, easy to learn and straight-forward. They will teach you good habits from the beginning so you dont have to relearn programming concepts in the future.

 

[ender_wiggin]

I know some BASIC and some Pascal, and some JASS (Blizzard Entertainment's home-made language for Warcraft III).

I really can't change at this point.

 

[der_kluge]

Support for VB has dwindled rapidly in the past. C# seems to be gaining popularity, and of course Java is quite popular. Likewise C++ is fairly popular in some areas, and C is struggling a little bit.

Last I heard Microsoft was actually considering dropping support for VB. I love the language, though, and for developing Windows applications, I can't think of anything better, really.

I really like VB, though I haven't really used it in several years. I've coded VB professionally.

 

[WayneLigon]

I know some VB; I did a lot of it a few years ago and the odd thing with Access keeps some of it fresh. The Microsoft site is probably better at solving problems, though. What specifically are you looking at doing?

I will say that after this, you concentrate on C#. By 'senior project', I assume you mean high school senior. In college, it'll almost all be C# or something like it. If not, that's what many companies will want you to learn.

 

[Maldur]

I might be able to help, just email me if you have a question.

C# and VB.net are the same, only the words are different.

 

[Fenlock]

ok, you got two weeks to learn a programming language and do some work good enough to pass.

I really would not recommend VB6! The language have evolved/devolved through the years to become something very very bad (IMHO). The only reason to learn VB6 is if you have to maintain legacy applications. Besides you have to get your hands on a copy of Visual Studio. I am not even sure if there exist a standalone compiler for VB6.

If you only have 2 weeks to learn a language and complete a project, you have to choose a language with good documentation and devolper tools.

I think psionicist is right about python (not sure about c). There is an excellent book called 'dive into python' which i believe is free (http://diveintopython.org/). You can find more information about python (including developer tools) at http://python.org/.

Or you could choose java, and just clobber something together from the codesnippets at the java almanac site (http://javaalmanac.com/). If you download java from http://java.sun.com you'll get netBeans IDE at the same time. NetBeans is great for doing rapid AWT or SWING development.

C# is a good choise to but you'll need to get a copy of visual studio.net. You could probably get the beta2 version of visual studio.net 2005 from microsoft, which would be good enough for your timespan.

Fenlock

 

[Vascant]

*laughs* Judging by the answers so far, I would bet many are in the IT field.. just not actual programmers.

1. In two weeks you will not learn a new language, but good chance you will get a grasp.

VB6? Tons of shops still use this langauge, MS is thinking about about removing support if not already in progress to do so. There is a reason, the newer versions of .Net are not doing as well as previous versions because of Dev Time and Dev Costs. You can find VB coders for 10k cheaper then a C#.. (Dollars vary for different areas). The one thing VB does bring is the time to market which .Net cannot touch. I think this will be much like the Y2k issue except without an fixed point to kill the language it will never go away.

I do agree, VB6 teaches some god aweful habits in new programmers that usually require a 2x4 to remove. You are going to learn a very bad version of OOP (Before someone jumps that VB6 does not do OOP, it does. All a language needs to be labeled as OOP is it has Objects that can manage behavior with methods and attributes). In my professional opinion, I would not learn bad habits until I knew the right way to do something nor would I allow anyone under me to do so either.

.Net Package: If you will be in the Enterprise arena, this would be a good thing to know but you will find as the employer gets smaller.. this package is not used. This will change though, it will just take a few more years. For long term, this is your best bet.

Java.. Just not a professional langauge yet. They really need to take a SmallTalk approach to this and then it might get some value to it. I find it funny when the best IDE for a language is notepad but maybe this is me, been using Java since like .42 beta.

If you learn something from reading the above, is each langauge has a time and place to be used. The key to being a good developer, is to know when that is. You are a perfect example, you have very little time but need a lot done. So you need to pick a language that fits that and then after these two weeks are over, select a langauge to learn that will help better you as a programmer. If you were really motivated to learn a real language, you would not have waited until the last 2 weeks to do so.

Check out this website: www.planetsourcecode.com

This will give you a good look at most of the langauges several of the other posts have brought up.

 

[drothgery]

Visual Basic is pretty much BASIC with flashy point-and-click features and I recommend _against_ learning it, at least for now. It will teach you bad habits and it will probably destroy your view of programming (various reasons).

<unapolegitc VB.NET advocate mode>

Notes here -- Microsoft has no plans to discontinue VB. They are phasing out support for VB6. But considering that it's a few months short of being three versions old, is nine years old, and VB8/VB2005/VB.NET 2 (coming this summer; in beta now) has a vastly improved upgrade-from-VB6 story, that's perfectly reasonable.

The current version of VB (Visaul Basic.NET 1.1 aka VB 7.1) is a complete, powerful object-oriented programming language that has all the language features Java does (and some it doesn't), with a major bias in favor of making code readable (code is case-insensitive, IDE agressively reformats, English-language keywords for the most part, a non-broken selection construct, ...). VB.NET has been my primary programming language since shortly after its launch in 2001, and I'd like to think that, at least in an ASP.NET context, I'm really good at it.

 

[Fenlock]

java.. Just not a professional langauge yet. They really need to take a SmallTalk approach to this and then it might get some value to it.

Vascant, i'm a bit curious about that statement.
Why is java not an professional language yet?

/Fenlock