
xkcd - Python - nickb
http://xkcd.com/353/
======
hhm
I won't upmod this, as I don't want news.yc to become mysteriously full of
xkcd comics tomorrow. But I think this incites interesting conversation.

These days I'm investigating computer vision algorithms. I had worked on them
for real time interactive apps (games that used webcams for input... ie: your
fingers are the mouse) using C++, but for experimentation this was getting
very tedious (even if I've always used Lua for the games themselves... but
that doesn't help in the CV engine at all).

These days I've been creating an hybrid that lets me play with CV stuff in
Python, so that I can experiment with a lot of algorithms and techniques at
once and only later see which ones are useful for my purposes for the final
real time C++ app. And it became REAL FUN at once. Python is refreshing, and
Python as a language is fun. It feels like playing while you should be
working.

And on monday, the real test to Python came. My girlfriend wanted me to teach
her enough programming to let her program some interesting Boolean Networks
stuff she's very intrigued about. In the past, I had been teaching her some
other languages, like a little of C++ and Flash, but they were somewhat boring
for her as they were always requiring a little more of abstract programming
knowledge from her (a curious foreign in the world of CS) to let her do
something interesting (structures, pointers, tedious strings stuff, and very
stupid and useless stage stuff in Flash). In Python, in a few hours of
teaching we could program some Boolean Networks, repeat some results we had
got in paper, and get some interesting new results... it even got very
interesting both for her and me, as we got some very curious and intriguing
results!!

We ended the day talking about how to extend that, about what other elements
of programming she'd need to learn to do some other things she wants to learn,
and also she's been teaching me some basic biology to understand what's the
connection with this strange BN stuff.

Of course, my gf is a very intelligent girl... but anyway I consider the
success of this first intent of teaching anything superior to an interactive
"hello world" to be an excellent marker of the simplicity and power of Python
as a programming language.

~~~
andreyf
_My girlfriend wanted me to teach her enough programming to let her program
some interesting Boolean Networks stuff she's very intrigued about._

Color me jealous.

------
ivankirigin
I started learning Python in a seminar from Mark Lutz, who wrote this great
book:
[http://books.google.com/books?id=5zYVUIl7F0QC&printsec=f...](http://books.google.com/books?id=5zYVUIl7F0QC&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:Mark+inauthor:Lutz&sig=az1yRZslgIN0f3cO84CFJ64rZXE)

He mentioned a list of groups that were using Python in a big way. Google,
Weta, ILM, JPL, iRobot, AnyBots, Justin.tv

SciPy is going to switch lots of Matlab users. If there is a good browser-side
way to use Python, it will skyrocket. One language that excels at the back
end, front end, media processing, signal processing, and scripting.

~~~
abstractbill
I've used Python for everything I've done so far at Justin.tv (next week I'm
learning ruby so that I can start doing web stuff too).

Just my opinion of course but I'd say while Python has some _excellent_
libraries, the language itself feels quite poorly thought-out compared to
something like Common Lisp. It could be worse, but it certainly could be a lot
better.

~~~
hhm
Of course... I haven't programmed in Lisp so much, so it makes me miss
Haskell. But anyway, it's a very interesting language.

------
breily
Python was my second language - and after Java as a first, this comic seems
pretty accurate.

------
sanj
Python gives you wings!

