Advice on learning Python efficiently

Re:Advice on learning Python efficiently by jpolitz on Thursday December 15, 2016 @12:52PM (#13186510)

I'm curious which parts look (more) complicated to you.

For some perspective, when teaching Pyret to total beginners, we start with arithmetic and calls to library functions, then build up to function definitions and examples. At that point, there's just a handful of syntactic constructs to consider, and they are nearly identical to Python.

Things like "data" and "cases" don't come till later, and do come with more overhead, but also are introduced to students who already have some "finger-feel" with the language. Python has its own overhead with "class" for defining structured data at a similar point, including things like "self" and "__init__".

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Advice on learning Python efficiently by tim333 on Thursday December 15, 2016 @07:16PM (#13189990)

I noted the in first example in the linked into - Python:

    def square(n):
      return n * n

Pyret:

    fun square(n :: Number) -> Number:
      n * n
    end

there's extra stuff. It also kind of loses the elegance of Python reading close to normal language - if you don't know programing but can do math you'd figure the first was define a function that gives a square but be confused what (n :: Number) -> Number: was about.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Advice on learning Python efficiently by jpolitz on Thursday December 15, 2016 @09:46PM (#13190682)

The type annotations are optional, so

    fun square(n):
      n * n
    end

is a closer direct comparison to the Python program, for contexts that don't use annotations.

[ Parent | on HN ]