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FORTRAN and COBOL, I can forgive. They were beginning to shape the programming world. Python on the other hand I can not forgive. This is the information age, it supposes to shake off those silliness.
Admittedly no language is perfect. But when I look at some languages I had to scratch me head in disbelieve "What the heck?" Those times it always bring back memory of past Minnesota Governor Jesse Vantura's comments about St. Paul road system "They must've been designed by drunken Irish."
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OriginalGriff wrote: Sort of: it was intended for punch cards, so in the early days specific columns had specific meanings. I can't believe you mentioned this! You set my therapy back decades!
Funny story: my freshman year of college we submitted programs on punchcards. During the first class of the first course, we were warned to buy a wide marker. Type your deck, line the cards up neatly, then draw a diagonal stripe across the top of the deck. If the deck got out of order the stripe could be used to visually fix the order of the deck. Also use at least 2 rubber bands to hold the deck together, in case one broke.
If we had to make significant revisions to the program, the top could get messy with multiple stripes, but the manual labor of producing a deck made us better, more careful programmers. That and having 12 hour turnaround times on program runs near the end of the semester -- we could not afford to be sloppy at all. [It also made us accurate typists -- miss a stroke, throw out that card]
It's end of the semester and nearing midnight. I had dropped off my deck at noon and had walked across campus to pick up the deck + printout. My run had been successful so I got to sleep!
Guy is walking towards me, carrying a deck of at least 300 cards. He drops the deck, the single rubber band breaks, and cards spray every where. No sign of a stripe on the top of the deck.
Poor guy looks like he's going to cry. He starts to get down on his knees to pick up the deck, straightens up, shakes his head, and walks away ...
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You have a twisted sense of humor.
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Greg Topham wrote: You have a twisted sense of humor. At the time I was totally surprised. Maybe shocked.
In later thinking about it -- the guy was an upper classman, based upon personal appearance and the size of the deck (higher level class, longer programs). Everyone was warned to take the aforementioned care of the decks, and the displays for rubber bands and felt-tipped wide markers were right next to the punch cards in the campus store. Freshman knew enough to take care ... upper classmen should know even better.
It was a good warning for others.[^]
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"Modern" Fortran is a bit better with so-called free-format coding. Intel Fortran even offers Visual Fortran that integrates into Visual Studio. Maybe other compiler makers do something similar. It's not as painful as it once was. Thankfully.
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Yeah but a programming language that makes you say 'Neeh' ?
modified 9-May-18 11:29am.
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glennPattonWork wrote: I am going to start using Notepad++ Use IDLE (the Python IDE) and its associated editor, it does all the spacing for you.
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Richard MacCutchan wrote: Use IDLE (the Python IDE) and its associated editor, it does all the spacing for you.
Will it space a Tesla Roadster?
Signature ready for installation. Please Reboot now.
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maybe readonly
In Word you can only store 2 bytes. That is why I use Writer.
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Tried that, is there a switch I missed I couldn't get it to indent properly...
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Worked right out of the box for me ... I trust you remembered to add the colon at the end of your if, else, elif, while, etc. statements.
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Richard MacCutchan wrote: it does all the spacing for you
And reveal all the passwords you're trying to enter
And fight with matplotlib over cpu time
I can't count the number of ppl not believing me when I told them that IDLE was causing their problems.
I even made some relaunch code, just to make my Python scripts escape from IDLE's claws
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No, never seen any of those, not had any problem with IDLE. And I don't quite see how it can reveal your passwords. Maybe you are doing something wrong.
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I am not going to discuss the details because this is the Lounge. I don't like IDLE because it changes the behavior of the language; and with a few tweaks, Notepad++ does everything I want.
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Martijn Smitshoek wrote: I don't like IDLE because it changes the behavior of the language How exactly does it do that?
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try in IDLE:
import getpass
getpass.getpass() then type something.
Not very useful.
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Quote: Warning (from warnings module):
File "C:\Program Files (x86)\Python_36\lib\getpass.py", line 100
return fallback_getpass(prompt, stream)
GetPassWarning: Can not control echo on the terminal.
Warning: Password input may be echoed.
Password:
Looks reasonable to me.
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Life would be boring without a little evil.
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It's very important to set your editor for "convert tabs to spaces" or whatever the setting is for your editor so you don't accidentally mix the two.
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Yeah! Who cares about whitespace and labels in Assembly!
... such stuff as dreams are made on
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Thanks for bringing this up ... my impression was exactly the same a few years ago when I tried to learn Python "for fun" (having C++/C# background). Luckily I did not need it for a project so I comfortably have given up ... Perhaps Python is meant for people without programming background ...
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No, Python is meant for people who want to get stuff done without having to debate brace layout and other trivialities. It's quicker to get simple stuff done than C/C++ (for one, you don't have to recompile). It can be extended with C/C++ if you think you have a performance need.
If you think Python is for non-programmers, you may be disappointed to find that it's exactly for you.
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I don't want to exaggerate, but we both probably agree that syntax is important, as it helps our brain to understand (quicker or slower ) what we are doing ... So, Glenn is quite right in his remarks. But of course as you say there are qualities in Python, and I would also add that it is in top 5 in the TIOBE list "as we speak". Perhaps I will give Python another try ... ,
BR
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