Re:Stanford dumps java as intro language
by dx034 on Thursday July 20, 2017 @03:53AM
(#14810729)
In the department I work, 5 people recently started using Python who never wrote a line of code before (except some limited VBA).
While the coding itself was relatively smooth, we spent a majority of our time consolidation which Python version works with which packages and how to create code that can be executed by computers that use Python 2 vs Python 3. Some people had to use packages that only worked with P2, others only worked with P3.
There's still not really a solution for this. We'll probably just switch to Julia once it gets enough support in areas we need..
So I disagree, Python is actually not a good language for beginners. The language is great but the ecosystem can be extremely frustrating.
Re:Stanford dumps java as intro language
by Doxin on Thursday July 20, 2017 @04:30AM
(#14810869)
The mistake here is not just making a choice but instead having people pick at random. Hardly pythons fault, every programming language has multiple incompatible versions.
While the coding itself was relatively smooth, we spent a majority of our time consolidation which Python version works with which packages and how to create code that can be executed by computers that use Python 2 vs Python 3. Some people had to use packages that only worked with P2, others only worked with P3.
There's still not really a solution for this. We'll probably just switch to Julia once it gets enough support in areas we need..
So I disagree, Python is actually not a good language for beginners. The language is great but the ecosystem can be extremely frustrating.