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Originally Posted by badcompany
Don't have a dog in this fight, but, Bucky has Python as his intro class for people just getting started.
For someone like me, who took a few classes in college, including basic, and can read a flow chart, but never got past the beginner level of programming, is Python the way to get back in the game?
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Python is weird. Beginners like it because it is easy to learn. Experienced programmers (who know how to avoid the shortcomings and pitfalls of dynamically typed languages that have x as an integer on one line, as a string on another, and as something completely different on yet another line). It is in the in-between areas (not still a novice, but not yet proficient) the problems arise.
Consider something really simple, like naming conventions. If I call final time (a "double" value) "dblFinalTime" and define it as a double value (with a decimal point, rather than being an integer), the app should complain if I try to consider it a string (a collection of letters and words, rather than a number). When I see that name in a line of code later, I know exactly what it is, what it should be, how it is used, and why.
That may seem trivial, and annoying, especially when all the values used have to be declared and initialized as specific "data types" (integers, characters, doubles, character strings, etc.). When your apps start growing, the value of such techniques (and the shortcomings of dynamically-typed languages like Python that let people develop habits like referring to multiple "things" using the same name, and using names like "A1" and "bacon" as variable names for numeric values) will be much more apparent.
With those caveats, Python is a fairly good choice for a "first" language. The principles are pretty much the same. Learn all about the loops and conditionals and arrays in Python, then download Visual Studio 2013 (Visual Basic) and get ready to dazzle the world with your creations. Seriously. Or bypass the Python stage, learn the basic of Visual Basic or VBA, and get straight to the dazzling part.
