"Python" discussion

[UltramaticOrange]

Seriously, though, every time I try to dive into phython I get annoyed that I can't put my indentations exactly where I want them. I'm very picky about that stuff. When I need a script to do something, I generally write a bash script that calls other intrepreted languages. I think I might still have one that uses PHP and Perl (for different strengths) in the same file.

so you didn't write a (ba)?sh script that created a perl script that used a combination of the PHP::Interpreter, Inline::C, Inline::Lua and SuperPython packages?

Not normally. Just when I'm stealing your root password.

[jacqueline]

I <3 python, but I could be biased because I went from using PERL

Perl is the language, perl the interpreter, there is no PERL

Aw darn, the first time I read this I thought you were making some grand philosophical statement...

[phantom20x]

I always liked python, especially better than perl. It reads like pseudocode. The only thing python lacks is built in regex support, but its easy enough to import re. Perl is really weird with its strict variable prefixes and weird operators. "Obfuscated perl" is a redundant statement.

Obfuscated perl is not redundant, only to those that do not know perl. XD

[tetsujin]

Yay! Python love!

I learned Python a couple years back: I had bought a PIC programmer (one of the "Kitsrus" ones) - it came with Windows software for communicating with the programmer hardware, and a (faulty) document describing the communication protocol... My first Python project was a command-line script for programming and verifying PICs, and it even wound up working on Windows and Mac when it was done...

I think of it as kind of the Lego of programming - it's just fun to work with and to build things with. It's versatile as hell, and nice for interactive sessions, too...

I don't want anyone to interpret my comments "for" Python as being "against" any other language, BTW...

[tgape]

But yeah, Python is for people who want to program but don't want to actually learn how to program. This is why I am able to use it.

Actually, one thing that I see that I dont like about python is that it brings about a breed of programmers that don't need to understand computers.

That's rather elitist, and a far too common attitude. Why is programming without understanding computers a bad thing? As long as these guys don't write software for nuclear powerplants I don't see the problem.

Ever hear of "too much job security"? That's why I complain about these things. I want to live life on the edge, have some uncertainty in my life. But as long as there are Basic programmers, SmallTalk programmers, PHP programmers, and now Python programmers (as well as a number of other languages), I have no employment concerns, for there are always major catastrophes to fix caused by people attempting to program without knowing basic logic or without understanding the side effects of various statements, or who don't know how to properly manage massive programming structures, so fail badly at large scale OOP.

A lot of people who do the kind of work that I do would really prefer to write their own programs, but the people hiring programmers to do original code don't pay nearly so well, because there's all of these other, cheaper programmers out there. It's also very easy to lose sight of the fact that, while every job we come in to clean up is an utter mess because someone with only a partial clue tried to do it the first time, and someone with only a partial clue tried to clean up the first mess, causing a bigger mess, many times, the cheap programmer is actually able to do the job needed.

Of course, when we fix up a few other programs, since we're always there, and make things that technically worked but were so buggy and slow that the users were constantly complaining about them, actually work the way they were supposed to, and five times as fast (ok, you're right - I'm lying. 9.8 times as fast - I just didn't admit it up front because you wouldn't have believed me), then we get the permanent job offers.

(For what it's worth, I accepted, so I'm actually not in the contracting business any more. And, even better, I get to write original code, because my employer's learned the error of its ways. But that doesn't mean I don't understand the complaints of my fellows who are still contractors.)

[Dakman]

I am sick of people thinking that python is for people who do not want to learn how to program! I started out in python, and I have worked with all the techniques that any C or Java programmer would employ. The fact of the matter is, you just have to have the will to learn more, instead of learning how to use a language, learn why it works. Right now I ussually use python for applications that don't really require resources, and applications that are intended to be very very portable (even though C and Java can be). I also use C for more lower level things, such as interfacing with hardware peripherals. And currently I am learning C# and .NET so I have an easier time getting a job in the future (I hope I don't get a C# job, it really sucks.)

[Delalyra]

Perl is going to go home sad and listen to Linkin Park.

Can you have an emo programming language?

/always saw Fortran saying 'Get off my lawn!'

I chortled.

[jima]

At work tip: Python website is .org NOT .com.

Great, now I have to look.

Oh. Huh. At least it peripherally pertains to something often referred to as a python.

(Also, what's so shocking? It's not like it's goatse or 2girls(etc) or anything...)

[phantom20x]

At work tip: Python website is .org NOT .com.

Great, now I have to look.

Oh. Huh. At least it peripherally pertains to something often referred to as a python.

(Also, what's so shocking? It's not like it's goatse or 2girls(etc) or anything...)

It wasn't about being shocking, notice the at work tip, as in not safe to view at work : )

[jima]

Tempting as it might be to learn python (I script mainly in perl/bash), the risk of getting roped into maintaining Anaconda is pretty daunting.

[jima]

It wasn't about being shocking, notice the at work tip, as in not safe to view at work : )

Ah, I misparsed the BBcode for (which, for the record, is "shock" between colons) as a declaration of, well, shock.

[Munksgaard_]

I couldn't agree more. Python is by far my favorite language!

[UltramaticOrange]

I am sick of people thinking that python is for people who do not want to learn how to program! I started out in python, and I have worked with all the techniques that any C or Java programmer would employ. The fact of the matter is, you just have to have the will to learn more, instead of learning how to use a language, learn why it works. Right now I ussually use python for applications that don't really require resources, and applications that are intended to be very very portable (even though C and Java can be). I also use C for more lower level things, such as interfacing with hardware peripherals. And currently I am learning C# and .NET so I have an easier time getting a job in the future (I hope I don't get a C# job, it really sucks.)

You know, I leaned quite a bit of C# back in college. I hated it at the time. My attitude was, "At least give me some Java!" but after nearly three years (*gruuuhg*) of VB6, I would start doing pirouettes in the isle if I learned they were going to move me to a C# project.

...huh. I just had a brilliant idea. Anyone in the Chicago area know of any programming and/or entry level Linux Admin openings?

...and why do I know how to spell "pirouettes"?

[space_raptor]

I know, or learned anyways, 8 programming languages, counting assembly. I've seen Python, but I don't want to learn it, because I know enough about programming to last me the rest of my life. Ugh.

Sorry to be the only guy who is not a programming geek.

However, I have experimented heavily on the medicine cabinet side of things. I say this: Screw the people who made ephedrine so hard to get. Goddamn methheads.

[tehmoth]

Not normally. Just when I'm stealing your root password.

so never then? it's just as well, since I don't have bash installed.

[UltramaticOrange]

I say this: Screw the people who made ephedrine so hard to get. Goddamn methheads.

"In traditional Chinese medicines, the herb ma huang (Ephedra sinica) contains ephedrine and pseudoephedrine as its principal active constituents."

Also, mmmm. Meat Heads.

[photosinensis]

Tempting as it might be to learn python (I script mainly in perl/bash), the risk of getting roped into maintaining Anaconda is pretty daunting.

So what you do is you move to a Debian-based distro. Though Anaconda for Debian exists, it's been largely abandoned as the folks who derive off of Debian have found other ways to do the same thing, but in C.

As for the comic, it's something I find myself doing quite frequently in Python.

[webbles]

Languages are tools, use the best one for the job, then move on.
This fanboy shit is ludicrous and does no good in the real world.

Oh and if you consider 100 line perl/python scripts programming, then god help you.

[UltramaticOrange]

so never then? it's just as well, since I don't have bash installed.

I'm tempted to quibble about who's machine Bash would be installed on, but I can't say I'm up to playing this kind of joking around all the way out.

However, I will add that one of my professors back in my college days left one of his perl scripts on the department server chmod'd to 777 so I added 200 blank lines and had it write an alias command in his .bashrc file to change su to a program that gave the same output as the actual su command then emailed me whatever was typed in as a password, claimed that it wasn't typed correctly, removed the alias then ran the actual su program. Sadly, he never ran the perl script. Keep in mind this is the same professor that once offered a full letter grade bump to anyone who could email the contents of a file chmod'd to 000 from his own user name (the only person to succeed told the secretary that he left his jacket in the server room).

[LDJosh]

There are over 30 programming languages on my resume.
No I didn't just list languages either. these are languages I have actually learned & coded in.

Python & Perl have their different uses. It's comparing apples & oranges. They're both fruit, but you put apples in a pie, and you mix orange juice with vodka, ok? You could put oranges in a pie and put vodka in apple juice, but then you're just a damn idiot.

Python is for small apps. Perl is for shell scripting.

[tgape]

I am sick of people thinking that python is for people who do not want to learn how to program! I started out in python, and I have worked with all the techniques that any C or Java programmer would employ. The fact of the matter is, you just have to have the will to learn more, instead of learning how to use a language, learn why it works.

Just for clarification, I don't suspect any individual python programmer of not wanting to learn how to program, until I encounter the individual and discover that such is the case. My reasoning for not using Python is that many of the libraries were written by people who either cannot be bothered, or apparently cannot be bothered, to actually learn to code properly. My experience has been, for the most part, in order to get a library accepted by the Perl community, one needs to achieve a greater understanding; more of the libraries are competently written. Further, when one submits a bugfix patch to the maintainer of a perl library, frequently (at least for me), the bugfix patch is judged on its merits. I have not tried to submit many patches to Python libraries, but every one of the ones I submitted were rejected on the basis of, 'We don't feel this exception you keep encountering would ever actually be encountered by a real person, so we don't want to accept your patch.' Oh, wait, there was the one gem response which was more along the lines of, 'I think exception handling should be done by the application, not the library', despite the fact that the library had the context to properly deal with the exception I wanted handled, and the program using the library couldn't get at that context, and despite the fact that his reference application did no exception handling at all (just like his library).

There's also the fact that everyone I know who has switched from Perl to Python has complained about problems with Perl that I just don't have, and my apples to apples comparison of perl versus python indicates that for my needs, perl is faster, and involves less typing.

[tgape]

There are over 30 programming languages on my resume.
No I didn't just list languages either. these are languages I have actually learned & coded in.

Python & Perl have their different uses. It's comparing apples & oranges. They're both fruit, but you put apples in a pie, and you mix orange juice with vodka, ok? You could put oranges in a pie and put vodka in apple juice, but then you're just a damn idiot.

Python is for small apps. Perl is for shell scripting.

Ruining either perfectly good orange juice or perfectly apple juice is, in my book, a waste. Python *should* be for small apps, given its exception handling capabilities. But since people don't use those abilities... I personally feel it's better as an instructional language. You can't do anything real in it, because when you're trying to order at Taco Bell, the guy behind the counter is *not* going to be able to handle a stack trace because you tried to make six modifications to your burrito. (No, TB doesn't have an interface that's written in Python. I can state this fairly confidently, because it beeps loudly and refuses to take the sixth change, rather than crashing with a stack trace.)

[segmentation fault]

Languages are tools, use the best one for the job, then move on.
This fanboy shit is ludicrous and does no good in the real world.

Oh and if you consider 100 line perl/python scripts programming, then god help you.

agree completely.

ill accept python for quick and dirty things. but people (mis)use python in such arcane ways, it disgusts me.

if theres one thing ive had trouble with in the past, its installing and running an open source app written in python.

There are over 30 programming languages on my resume.
No I didn't just list languages either. these are languages I have actually learned & coded in.

it might be better to leave off some languages. you should only have a couple, especially ones that you will be using in the job youre applying for.

im mostly a c/c++ guy and i hated receiving a constant stream of ruby/RoR job postings. so i took it off my resume.

Python is for small apps. Perl is for shell scripting.

Perl is dead. i hate Perl. it wouldnt be so bad if i didnt have to read my code, but i do, and its hard to believe my hands could create such a mess.

[UltramaticOrange]

There's also the fact that everyone I know who has switched from Perl to Python has complained about problems with Perl that I just don't have...

I once wrote a Perl script that kept throwing the oddest error. The fix? Delete the blank line preceding the line throwing the error .

[tgape]

Not normally. Just when I'm stealing your root password.

so never then? it's just as well, since I don't have bash installed.

This reminds me of the guy who, in response to my informing him his system had security problems that needed fixing, removed his root account.

I demonstrated to him that what he did was not secure his system, but rather give it to me (as the only person with physical access to it, since it wasn't on-line).

For the less astute, the reason is the root account entry and password are used for legitimate administration efforts, not for standard system activity. So the standard system programs running as root continue to run as root even without the account, and when someone breaks into the system utilizing those programs, they get whatever access the program had, i.e. root. So, for example, he couldn't su to root, because root had no password, but I could su to root just fine, because su had a security hole. Even more fun, even after watching me do it, he couldn't get in. (He tried shoulder surfing my secret su password, but it's really hard to follow a 129 (if I recall correctly; it's been a while) character password. Missing even one character is a killer. heh.)

[tgape]

I once wrote a Perl script that kept throwing the oddest error. The fix? Delete the blank line preceeding the line throwing the error .

I've been called to help coworkers with a few of those. Typically, there is an actual problem somewhere above the line in question, but perl is able to work out the issue for the common case, so long as that blank line isn't there. Sometimes it's a quote mismatch, sometimes it's a missing semicolon, sometimes it's a comma instead of a semicolon, and sometimes it's other things.

In any case, they are all really annoying, and I'm very glad I stopped getting them several years back, when I learned to code more carefully.

Now, if you had a problem where it kept throwing an odd error until you deleted the blank line following the line throwing the error... that would be nuts.

Oh, and btw, thanks for giving me this opportunity to Murphy myself into having another one of these problems on my next major script.

[UltramaticOrange]

I've been called to help coworkers with a few of those. Typically, there is an actual problem somewhere above the line in question, but perl is able to work out the issue for the common case, so long as that blank line isn't there. Sometimes it's a quote mismatch, sometimes it's a missing semicolon, sometimes it's a comma instead of a semicolon, and sometimes it's other things.

That would explain the, "I know there's more to this story but I can't recall what." feeling I always have when I tell it.

Oh, and btw, thanks for giving me this opportunity to Murphy myself into having another one of these problems on my next major script.

No problem. Just let me know if there's anything else I can do to help complicate your life a little more.

[silverhammermba]

<3 Ruby.

Preach it brother!

All the ease of Python, plus some, with built-in regex support. The more I use Ruby, the more I realize that it was made by programmers for programmers. I feel dirty using anything else now.

Haha, great minds think alike! The second I read this comic, my very first thought was "I wonder if he's used Ruby." I've always had a soft spot for Java because it was the first language I learned, but after I learned Ruby, it just seems so clunky and verbose. C++, somehow, looks even uglier. Oh regular expressions, iterators, objects, how I love thee!

[neoeinstein]

Perhaps you should take a look at Boo. It's python-inspired, but statically-typed. Additionally, it's type-inferred, duck-typed, compiler-extensible, optionally white-space agnostic, and wrist-friendly. It was originally build to target Mono and .NET, but can also output Java bytecode through IKVM and BooJay. It's one of the first languages that is able to walk through that "wall" separating .NET and Java.

Think of it as the in between for the static and dynamic typed worlds.

Here's a quick overview of its features [pdf]

[tehmoth]

This reminds me of the guy who, in response to my informing him his system had security problems that needed fixing, removed his root account.

Not really the same, bash just never got installed as pdksh and csh work fine. I realised it would be unfamiliar territory for the bash script hacker to find themselves at an unfamiliar prompt after stealing my root password and breaking into my house to log in.

[9tails]

<3 Ruby.

Preach it brother!

All the ease of Python, plus some, with built-in regex support. The more I use Ruby, the more I realize that it was made by programmers for programmers. I feel dirty using anything else now.

Haha, great minds think alike! The second I read this comic, my very first thought was "I wonder if he's used Ruby." I've always had a soft spot for Java because it was the first language I learned, but after I learned Ruby, it just seems so clunky and verbose. C++, somehow, looks even uglier. Oh regular expressions, iterators, objects, how I love thee!

I learned to program using Java. Then I used C++ for a few years. Then I learned Ruby. Going from C++ to Ruby is like having a starring role in Plato's "The Myth of the Cave".

[UltramaticOrange]

This reminds me of the guy who, in response to my informing him his system had security problems that needed fixing, removed his root account.

Not really the same, bash just never got installed as pdksh and csh work fine. I realised it would be unfamiliar territory for the bash script hacker to find themselves at an unfamiliar prompt after stealing my root password and breaking into my house to log in.

Well, strictly speaking, if we're breaking into your place anyway, we don't need the root password. It's been a while since I've done it so I don't remember all the details, but you can stop grub/lilo from booting the os, tell it that the init script is "/bin/bash" (or in your case tsh or whatever else might be your favorite prompt) then unmount/mount key parts of the system (if I recall correctly, / and /proc). Viola. Full root access without a password. I should still have (poor) notes/bookmarks on how to do this correctly someplace at home. If I can reproduce the steps, I'll post them.

[segmentation fault]

if youre interested in learning programming languages id recommend starting with C. it may be a confusing rabbit hole in which youll want to harm yourself repeatedly but once you reach enlightenment you can become a monstrous force regardless of what language you use.

youre closer to the machine with C and youll notice how each line of code you write interacts with the hardware. once you learn good efficient code in C you can write good code in any language.

It's been a while since I've done it so I don't remember all the details, but you can stop grub/lilo from booting the os

thats what the grub password is for

[tehmoth]

Well, strictly speaking, if we're breaking into your place anyway, we don't need the root password. It's been a while since I've done it so I don't remember all the details, but you can stop grub/lilo from booting the os, tell it that the init script is "/bin/bash" (or in your case tsh or whatever else might be your favorite prompt) then unmount/mount key parts of the system (if I recall correctly, / and /proc). Viola. Full root access without a password. I should still have (poor) notes/bookmarks on how to do this correctly someplace at home.

Of course that presumes I have grub, lilo or a /proc filesystem. Also, my console in /etc/ttys is not marked secure, so no root logins, my /etc/boot.conf contains only "boot" so no dropping into single user. You might as well just take the computer, what's a little theft on top of b&e. You'll be able to get root then, I'm sure.

[sumnihil]

i <3 python. and wicked gay emoticons. huzzah!

[UltramaticOrange]

thats what the grub password is for

You know, I forgot that's even there.

Of course that presumes I have grub, lilo or a /proc filesystem. Also, my console in /etc/ttys is not marked secure, so no root logins, my /etc/boot.conf contains only "boot" so no dropping into single user. You might as well just take the computer, what's a little theft on top of b&e. You'll be able to get root then, I'm sure.

Uuuuhm. QUICK! LOOK! A PROGRAM CALLED "FORTUNE"! *runs*

[spelunker]

My first programming language was Python! I wanted to make a scenario for a game called Freedom Force and they used python for scripting.

I haven't used it in a looong time, but I like this Django thing- I might give it a try over winter break.

[redthegreat]

I have been learning python for about three weeks now "I am a newby to programming" its a module on my computing degree course. I am loving it so far, if any of you guys have some good resources to show me do help yourself. I am loving its intuitive nature and its readability. I made some code to display a working set of traffic lights "don't patronise" I am actually proud of myself lol.

[Jessica]

as for "religious wars": http://welbog.homeip.net/~inferno/php/view.php?postid=17

[hotaru]

Well, strictly speaking, if we're breaking into your place anyway, we don't need the root password. It's been a while since I've done it so I don't remember all the details, but you can stop grub/lilo from booting the os, tell it that the init script is "/bin/bash" (or in your case tsh or whatever else might be your favorite prompt) then unmount/mount key parts of the system (if I recall correctly, / and /proc). Viola. Full root access without a password. I should still have (poor) notes/bookmarks on how to do this correctly someplace at home. If I can reproduce the steps, I'll post them.

or you could just open the case, pull the hard drive out, pop it into an external enclosure, and change anything you want on it

as for "religious wars":

To me, the scariest thing a programmer can say is, "I don't like X, I'd rather use Y," where X and Y are the names of programming languages. It means that whoever said this has fallen into the language trap.
...
JavaScript's terrible object-oriented implementation

that looks like a hilariously transparent attempt at trolling, if it isn't intentional it's even more funny