Python

[Boinbo]

Hey guys, quick question here

I'm gonna start learning python, is there anything I should know that's important? Like, misconceptions, or helpful tricks? Thanks in advance!

[The King of the Undead]

no simycolons.

[lewdicrous]

If you ever get stuck, youtube and stack overflow are your friends.

Also, search through the programming subforum, you might find answers there as well.

[Video Beagle]

You should know what the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow is.

[vorticalbox]

learn python 3.6 or higher
 

def say_hello(name: str) -> str:
  return f'hello {name}'

print(say_hello('vorticalbox'))

 

[Guest]

2 & 3 are different enough that people mention it. 

[Dat Guy]

19 hours ago, Boinbo said:

Like, misconceptions

"Python is a good language."

[Boinbo]

4 hours ago, Dat Guy said:

"Python is a good language."

Could you explain? And I see your signature, I'll learn C# probably after Python and Java script

[wasab]

Python is very fun language.

 

You can teach it to kids. They will enjoy playing around with it like Lego toys. 

[Dat Guy]

C is not C#.

 

Python has whitespace as syntax and is horrendously slow.

[vorticalbox]

55 minutes ago, Dat Guy said:

C is not C#.

 

Python has whitespace as syntax and is horrendously slow.

Faster than trying to train a neural network in javascript....

[Dat Guy]

16 hours ago, wasab said:

You can teach it to kids.

You can teach kids how to use the numbers from 1 to 10 with colored sticks.

 

Explains Python rather well, honestly.

[T9987]

After you install python also install VS Code and download the python extension within it. It is much better than using IDLE.

[T9987]

Also, single-quotes are the same as double-quotes. I prefer single quotes so I don't have to press the SHIFT key.

 

However, you will eventually want to do something like this.

print('don't')

That will give you a SyntaxError so you have two options

#use double quotes
print("don't")

#or put a backslash to create an Escape Sequence
print('don\'t')

When you use that backslash it makes it use the actual character instead of what it means in the language.

More about that here.

https://docs.python.org/2.0/ref/strings.html

 

I know this is not something that is necessary for a beginner however single quotes is something in python that is different than other languages.

[Dat Guy]

4 hours ago, T9987 said:

After you install python also install VS Code and download the python extension within it.

Note that this will eat another half GiB of RAM which is insane.

[vorticalbox]

15 hours ago, T9987 said:

After you install python also install VS Code and download the python extension within it. It is much better than using IDLE.

if you're doing python development pycharm or go home.

[Dat Guy]

5 minutes ago, vorticalbox said:

if you're doing python development pycharm

The rare occasions where I write Python code are perfectly handled by Acme tbh.

[vorticalbox]

1 hour ago, Dat Guy said:

The rare occasions where I write Python code are perfectly handled by Acme tbh.

I just like the default python env it creates for your projects and the ability to search and add modules form the ui

[T9987]

On 7/30/2019 at 5:48 AM, vorticalbox said:

if you're doing python development pycharm or go home.

I like VS Code because of the live share extension where I can work on code with friends. I'm sure both have their advantages and disadvantages but in the end it comes down to preference.

[vorticalbox]

Just now, T9987 said:

I like VS Code because of the live share extension where I can work on code with friends. I'm sure both have their advantages and disadvantages but in the end it comes down to preference.

I use vscode at work for node development, its actually very very good.

 

Live share is also great

[L0m]

As a fairly young programmer I'm constantly trying to do things for myself but trust me, if you don't know how to do something even if it's minor, just ask, and if you really can't solve a problem don't give up, ask for someone to show you what is wrong with it because sometimes you just need a second pair of eyes. Resource-wise check out Stack-overflow, *here*, W3schools and youtube (some people include dan bader and the coding train). Also I find that programming once a day no matter how long will improve your capabilities much more than big chunks (assuming you've learnt the basics)

[wasab]

On 7/28/2019 at 5:35 PM, Dat Guy said:

You can teach kids how to use the numbers from 1 to 10 with colored sticks.

 

Explains Python rather well, honestly.

I teach my kid sister calculus. Kids can amaze you

[geo3]

On 7/30/2019 at 3:48 AM, vorticalbox said:

if you're doing python development pycharm or go home.

Unless you regularly work in several languages and don't want to have to remember the idiosyncrasies of several different IDEs

[tikker]

Learn Python 3, mainly, as 2 is end of life starting next year.