First Blog Entry

Georacer

Joined Nov 25, 2009
5,182
It was a pleasant read. Thanks for staying in version 2.7.

It reads like a light, short multi-page tease for someone who wants to know what Python is about.
I hope this was your intention.
 

tshuck

Joined Oct 18, 2012
3,534
It's a decent teaser of learning Python.

I would mention it being an interpreted language as another difference from C, but that may just be me...

Also, there is an open-source alternative to MATLAB in GNU Octave, which strives to fully implement MATLAB functionality with few deviations.

Overall, a good read.
 

DerStrom8

Joined Feb 20, 2011
2,390
Nice work so far! I had considered learning Python some time ago but I ended up sticking with C++ and Java, since they tend to be most common in the area where I live and work. I will definitely be following your blog though.

Many thanks!
Matt
 

Thread Starter

ActivePower

Joined Mar 15, 2012
155
I'm sorry I kind of messed up in the last entry when I said that Python is a weakly typed language. Turns out I was indeed wrong with my understanding of what that term implied. I made what is apparently a common mistake of wrongly judging Python to be a weakly-typed language based on its leniency towards variable manipulations forgetting many basics things in the process.

I have rectified the error in the entry since and added a shoddy explanation to it. I chose to include the incorrect version in the post nonetheless if only for educating anyone else who might make a similar mistake.
(Btw I have since then posted the next article)

Once again, my apologies for the error.
 

Brownout

Joined Jan 10, 2012
2,390
I use a combination of shell programming (csh) sed, awk & Perl to manage my linux projects.
I've never found a comparable solution to windows projects (don't care much for running gnu tools under windows) Might python do what I want? Creating, searching, copying directories, text generation, text to database conversion etc.
 

djsfantasi

Joined Apr 11, 2010
9,156
I use a combination of shell programming (csh) sed, awk & Perl to manage my linux projects.
I've never found a comparable solution to windows projects (don't care much for running gnu tools under windows) Might python do what I want? Creating, searching, copying directories, text generation, text to database conversion etc.
Which version of Windows do you want to do this on? Windows command scripts can do much of the examples you quoted. These are ".cmd" or ".bat" files. Give me some specific requirement and I'll see if I can write an example.

I once wrote a script to access a series of web sites, time it's response and send an email if the sites were having problems. The only sticking point might be text to database conversion, but it depends.
 

Thread Starter

ActivePower

Joined Mar 15, 2012
155
@Brownout: I occasionally use Bash scripts under Linux to automate system tasks too. For some reason, I never considered Python for the same job. Under Windows, you could use Batch scripts as @djfantasi said.

Python does support quite a bit of OS related manipulation through its os module. I've never tried using it for this purpose though, so if you could give me something I'll try and see if I can work on it in Python.
 
Top