Re: Hobbyist - Python vs. other languages
- From: Matthew Fitzgibbons <elessar@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:28:26 -0600
fprintf wrote:
I have been playing with computers since I first learned to program
moving shapes on an Atari 800XL in BASIC. After many years of dabbling
in programming languages as a hobbyist (I am not a computer scientist
or other IT professional), I have never found a way to stick with a
language far enough to do anything useful. I learn all about loops
and data structures and functions/methods etc. but never get to create
a program that will do anything of value that I can't more easily do
via freeware. Well, except the slot car timing system I wrote in C++
for Linux many moons ago.
Honestly Python seems like a breath of fresh air and possibly a way to
get back to my BASIC roots, you know, programming just for the fun of
it.
Since I don't have a specific problem to solve, besides
Pythonchallenge (which I found very cryptic), and Project Euler (which
I found beyond my mathematics skills), is there a place to go for
increasingly difficult problems to solve? I have followed a number of
the recommended online tutorials that contain a logical progression of
problems and yet they all end at the point where a person has enough
knowledge of the syntax, but not really enough to do anything.
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
My situation's a bit different because I code for a living, but I also code sometimes for the heck of it. I come up with small, hobby projects one of two ways. (1) There's a whole lot of comp sci stuff out there that I don't know. So when I come across a new concept, pattern, etc., I write a little implementation. E.g., one day I was reading about how someone used memoization in a certain problem (don't remember what), so I thought "I bet I could do that as a decorator." So I did. (2) If you have some simple task, write a program to do it (even if there's a program out there already). E.g., I recently took a trip to Japan and decided to learn the kana before going. I found a website to help me learn them, then implemented my own version in Python for the heck of it.
If you just examine the things you do with a computer, and challenge yourself "I bet I can do that in 100 lines of Python," I think you'll find no shortage of projects.
-Matt
.
- References:
- Hobbyist - Python vs. other languages
- From: fprintf
- Hobbyist - Python vs. other languages
- Prev by Date: Re: Case tagging and python
- Next by Date: Re: Questions about asyncore
- Previous by thread: Re: Hobbyist - Python vs. other languages
- Next by thread: simple problem with lists I am just forgetting
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
