Python programming language

Bad!

0 out of 4 users found the following review helpful.

one of the best programming languages

0 out of 2 users found the following review helpful.

Since we already have two good reviews from experienced programmers, I'll focus on the area I know about: Python as first language.

I began coding a short time ago. I knew about the logic, but not how to get it into code.

I wanted to learn C++ and failed at structure. After a while I could do it, but it felt clumsy.
I tried my luck with Java and didn't quite get going.

Then I tried Python, and got in at once.

The structure of programs can be understood easily.

The Python interpreter lets you experiment very quickly.

Programs can be extremely complex, but Python also allows for quick and simple scripting.

Code written by others is extremely readable.

And coding just flows - almost like natural speaking/thinking.

As a bonus, there is the great open book How to Think Like a Computer Scientist ( http://ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCS/python/english2e/html/ ) which teaches Python and is being used for teaching Python and Programming at universities.

So I can wholeheartedly recommend Python to beginners in programming, and as the other reviews here show, it is also a great language for experienced programmers and seems to be a good language to accompany you in your whole coding life.

PS: Yes, I know about the double meaning of "first language" :)
PPS: This review is also avaible under free licenses from my site: http://draketo.de/english/free-software/light/python-for-beginners

2 out of 2 users found the following review helpful.

Python is an excellent language for getting all kinds of work done. For OO programmers it offers a dynamic object model.

It's not difficult to find good reviews of Python on the Internet, so I'll focus on it's weaknesses.

Out-of-the box Python lacks popular high-level concurrency support. There is no high level interprocess communication library, no lightweight processes, no transactional memory etc.

To address this one can either "roll-their-own" or look into Twisted or Stackless Python. In the case of Twisted one must commit to an "unnatural" programming model. Stackless requires recompiling python.

One this commitment is made there are significant communities behind both projects, however, these communities are tiny in comparison to the mainstream python community.

Python also lacks a macro or similar facility. The official position of the Python maintainer is that python will never had such a facility.

Python also lacks out of the box support for "freezing" apps into bundles which can be run on machines lacking an os provided python interpreter, or an older version of one than desired. Assembling these bundles for the big three major desktop operating systems, Windows, OS X, and Linux, requires tracking down a lot of software all over the web and doing a lot of scripting if the app in questions is non-trivial.

Currently, popular python libraries for doing this are py2exe for Windows, py2app for OS X, and cx_freeze for Posix.

Buildbot (a twisted application, see above) is popular for running build farms and automating testing and app bundle building.

Despite these flaws, python is an practical language for getting work done in a timely manner and having a maintainable codebase when finished.

17 out of 18 users found the following review helpful.

Python is the best general-purpose programming language I ever used (having studied CS and being a geek, I used or looked at quite a lot of them in the last 25 years).

It is new enough to be well-designed and high-level.
It is mature enough to be very useful and well-behaved.

Coding in Python is easy, fun and going fast.

You can easily read code (no matter if it is your own code or code of someone else), because it is high-level and clean.

You can easily write code. The code volume you need to get something done is usually much less than in other programming languages (and this is not just about typing stuff, having less code means also less bugs, less maintenance costs).

Often you don't have to write code, as it comes with a good standard library that contains lots of useful and easy to re-use code. There are also lots of python modules available on the internet.

You can easily debug code. You can try code in the interactive interpreter. No need to compile the code, just run it.

There are great IDEs for Python, e.g. Eclipse/PyDev or Eric (plus many others I didn't use yet).

You can easily get platform-independent code (runs on Linux, Mac, Win32 and many others).

If you have questions, there is a big community of python coders (web sites, irc channels, mailing lists, news groups, user groups).

13 out of 15 users found the following review helpful.