February 24, 2004

Woe, woe is me

I haven’t been charmed by the snake for long, but oh how it’s charmed me.

Right now, I’d really, really, really like to have Python’s slice oper­a­tors in PHP.

Once you’ve started using Python, you’ll never want to go back. I’ve learned C, moved on to PHP, and am now using/learning Python for some projects, but I occa­sion­ally have to dip back into PHP.

It’s like being torn away from a warm, com­fort­able, pro­duc­tive world and being yanked into a cold, harsh, world where }’s and )’s watch over a pro­gram­mer chain-​gang.

I’ve been debat­ing whether to learn Java or Perl next, but I don’t want to leave the world of Python… what’s a coder to do?

Filed under: Technology,Web design

Next:
Previous:

Related

  • http://www.michaelbernstein.com Michael Bernstein

    what’s a coder to do? Learn more Python. there is plenty of stuff in the stan­dard libraries alone to keep you occu­pied for years, let alone the add-​on libraries.

    If you’re mostly coding web appli­ca­tions cur­rently (which seems to be implied), I sug­gets you take a look at wxPython to branch out into desk­top client applications.

    Or, in fur­ther devel­op­ing your server-​side skills, you might like to take a look at Zope and/or the var­i­ous imple­men­ta­tions of Tem­plate Attribute Lan­guage. TAL has the advan­tage, BTW, of boast­ing three dif­fer­ent Python imple­men­ta­tions (besides Zope’s), two for Java, and one each for Perl and PHP. This argues strongly that Page Tem­plates are a good skill investment.

  • http://www.holovaty.com/ Adrian Holovaty

    I’m with Michael: Keep with the Python. We’re doing our devel­op­ment almost exclu­sively in Python where I work, and it’s a dream. The more I learn, the less I want to use any­thing else. Going back to PHP or Perl feels like step­ping into the dark ages.

  • http://www.ashbykuhlman.net/ Nathan Ashby-Kuhlman

    Yeah, well, at least you guys are talk­ing about “going back” to PHP. Try “going back” to Visual Basic (between ASP, VBScript, and VBA, I am sort of stuck with it at work). It’s really only one step up from having to use line num­bers (remem­ber THOSE dark ages?). If you do seri­ously want an answer on Java versus Perl, though, I strongly rec­om­mend Java, but it depends on what style you want to code in. Java is engi­neered to be a beau­ti­ful lan­guage in an inter­nally con­sis­tent, struc­tured kind of way. Perl is engi­neered to be a beau­ti­ful lan­guage in a look-​how-​few-​lines-​this-​can-​take kind of way. Part of that dis­tinc­tion is prob­a­bly just the dif­fer­ence between the greater for­mal­ity of a com­piled lan­guage versus an inter­preted one, though. All of this is speak­ing as some­one with a sim­i­lar C/PHP back­ground who’s learned a little of Java and Perl in the past year — but who hasn’t yet dab­bled in Python at all. Judg­ing by the con­sen­sus here, it sounds like I need to fix that immediately.

  • http://www.heisel.org Chris Heisel

    I prob­aby should have clar­i­fied, I’m def­i­nitely going to con­tinue to learn more about Python… as one of my projects at work expands I think there’ll be more use for it. And for any per­sonal or free­lance projects it’ll be the lan­guage of choice.

    But at work, Java, for some reason, is the lan­guage of choice and some Perl is in there too, so I feel like I need to become con­versent in at least one, if not proficient.

    It just takes a big leap to get the energy to learn a new lan­guage that you know is not going to be as ele­gant or as “right” as Python.

    As I try to men­tally pre­pare myself, a part of my brain keeps saying “Why do that, when Python is sooooo much better.” In some ways, Python should be the first, and only, or else the last lan­guage that you learn.

    Once you’ve been charmed by the snake, there’s no going back!

  • http://www.michaelbernstein.com If you must pick one…

    …then pick Java, and also take a look at Jython.

  • http://www.owensoft.net owen

    I plan to use php for­ever. That is until I dis­cover some­thing that allows me to write more code, faster and in the way I want to write it. I for one started with QBasic, then VBasic, then C, then Pascal, then ASP, then PHP. Web­de­vel­op­ment is defi­nately making me lazy and it’s mostly because of PHP.

    If there’s any­thing I hate it is a delay between con­cept and first draft.

  • http://www.heisel.org Chris Heisel

    Owen, you should really try Python… for a light appli­ca­tion using it as CGI is good, and for heavy duty work mod_python is terrific.

    Python’s syntax is easier to learn and more pow­er­ful than PHP’s (god bless slice oper­a­tors), and it leads to more rapid devel­op­ment that you’ll see with PHP… at least with my experience.

    When used with some­thing like Chee­tah, http://​www.​chee​tahtem​plate.org/ it’s really easy to have a clean seper­a­tion of model and view, while keep­ing the abil­ity to have logic in your view (which I liked about PHP).