I was hoping someone would say the polar opposite.

Not to create an argument, just saying...

Yes, yes, 1000 times yes.

Yes, I would agree with this as well. I would take the simplest language you can understand (usually one of the highest-level ones that are weakly typed; PHP is a good example of this) and work through some basic projects. The more "trivial" things that bother you (defining variables correctly, for example), the less likely you will want to actually do any work. PHP is a great beginner's language because it's weakly typed (meaning no strict var typing) and easy to get going. It's also a bad beginner's language for the same reasons - you can develop very bad habits as a result.

C/C++/Java didn't decide that strict typing of variables would be fun to make programmers annoyed. It's there for a very obvious reason. PHP ignores it for the sake of developer productivity and because PHP is not meant to be fast whatsoever. Efforts to "speed up" PHP are looked down upon by the PHP dev team, and mostly for good reason - it's a scripting language for the web that is simple to use, yet powerful enough to do some advanced stuff (they just supported namespaces, and look at Symfony for how they structure dependency injection and other advanced concepts).

Anyway, this is a bit rambling. But you're on the right track. If you don't like Python, maybe try something else.

meh this totally depends on the book. I would bet there is an oreilly book that would teach you python along with programming concepts very well. The one I and others recommended a while back, "JavaScript: The Definitive Guide" wasn't just for the lulz, it really is a great book for a total noob to programming in general, who wants to learn JavaScript. Annoyingly the free sample is just the intro, but I'd imagine this is a good one: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596158064/

I agree learning concepts/theory first is correct, I think I just forgot about them, it's a good place to start.

Great post Dave. Being able to write that showed that you understand the concept that class was trying to teach.

Don't get lazy and call it a Scheme class. It's a programming concepts class, that happens to use Scheme. Learning Scheme is a side effect of the class (no pun intended).

Also, if you make a post about what you do and don't like about Python, we would be able to suggest a different language that better suited your liking.

Eh, let me figure more stuff out then I can answer that question. It just bothers me for no good reason.

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For the web guys: I just downloaded Mozilla's super-beta Aurora browser. It seems little faster than firefox 4, but nothing to go berzerk over. You can also check out ff5 and ff6, which I downloaded too.

It's quite different unless it's only after trying (and failing) to learn Linux that you say this.

If only they gave the console the same amount of attention as the network.

(I worked on a game that had issues w/ hacking exploits online because MS doesn't let you encrypt saves, so users could hex edit them to their hearts' content; PS3 had no problems)

l.m.f.a.o. at Sony's CAPTCHA:

http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/jsp/forms/generateCaptcha.jsp

View the source, im lolling

Oh wow. Somebody thought he found an optimization... but completely missed the point, heh.

I don't understand something:

So there's two new threads on Java, and they both are the same: "I need help with [basic problem]. I have all this GUI, running three images and ten classes, but I can't figure out how to use a [primitive I should have learned on day one]."

What's up with that? Are schools trying to get people addicted to Java before they begin teaching any programming?

I think we discussed it here before, Unis seem to heavily favour Java for some reason. I hated it at University. Beans this and beans that. Still don't get what a bean is.

Java's not a bad language to start teaching on. It's not the best (imo - something like Scheme or Python is better) but its certainly better than a lot of other choices (C or C++). It's also gotten to the point where there are a lot of good programs and software for helping people learn.

In the end though, a lot of people are bad at teaching programming. It's not going to matter what language you use if you've got a poor curriculum.

I've worked with Java for years and still don't know what a bean is. The only time I hear it brought up is when someone is complaining about how it works.

This. Even bad teachers can mess up python.

I can't imagine learning programming in an academic environment. It seems so impractical.

It seems ridiculous (to me) that there is homework assignment 7 and you are just learning about an if statement.

I can almost* understand it if they are explaining void, public, main, how to print, import Scanner, etc, but GUI first?

*If it really took 6 assignments to get all that done.

jfc lol took me about 2 hours to work out how to get a paypal buy now button on an ASP.net website

It's not so bad. My COBOL experience not withstanding (yes I learned COBOL in college and I am 28 years old), my C/C++ classes were pretty solid from one instructor. I took three courses with him, and all followed a similar structure: We took three sets of exams per semester with each exam being two parts over two class dates. One day/exam was dedicated to theory - it was all handwritten with no computer access allowed.

The other day/exam was dedicated to competitive programming. There were about 25 people in my classes, and he would have 2 TAs plus himself present. He gave us access to a netshare, where we opened about 18 project files. Each project had a point value in the filename, ranging from 3 points to 21 points (something like this, anyway). The more points the project was worth, the harder it was.

We had 90 minutes to debug/code the projects in any order we wanted. When we finished a project, we stuck a post-it note to the top of our monitor, signaling a TA. The TA would come over, watch us compile and execute the project, check to see that the output was correct, then check off a list indicating we earned some points for that project.

The easy projects in our intro class were debugging syntax errors or false pointers; the more complex ones would involve solving for primes or printing out Pascal triangles or something.

The theory portion was graded out of 50 points; the denominator of the competitive portion was based on a curve of the average score of the class. The average score earned a C+ or a B-, depending on how charitable he was feeling.

I really liked the format of the class.

PayPal makes their **** way too complicated for how simple it is. Reading their docs makes me insane. And, now off I go to implement an Express Checkout flow.

I think Neil was being facetious, but that seems like a pretty cool format, though quite the grind-pit experience. But if you are prepping for real-world, this appears optimal. So much better than staring at brain-smashing problem set for two days.

What was optimal for this class? Starting at 3 points and working up, or starting at the top and working down? Or speed read the problems and pick the ones you really know?

It probably depends on the class composition. The tougher the competition, the higher variance you should be willing to accept (attempting very difficult questions with the possibility of wasting 20-30 minutes if you cannot find the answer).

I switched to Economics/Game Theory later on in life, so I never did get to fully analyze the game-theory optimal approach.

Getting read to switch jobs and new boss suggested I read "Securities Operations: A Guide to Trade and Position Management" to get some insight on the overall processes of a Securities Trading Organization.

Very excited about new job, still IT but within the banking industry. sweet pay bump too

seriously, paypal docs are ridiculous, not up to date, and there is no consistency. support is non existent, email and phone. its so bad that even their support guys on x.com don't know the correct implementation.

i was looking into setting up subscription payments with them, their notification system used to send out notices when the subscription was due to end, then they mysteriously removed this notification and everyone was left stranded having to manually calculate 30+ days after a payment was sent in. support guys had no idea. then suddenly, certain subscriptions started receiving these notices again, and again support guys had no idea.

the mere fact that they will just change their API and not tell anyone was enough to make me just ditch them altogether. but they are cheap and popular so maybe it was a mistake

I find Paypals IPN OK to work with but yeah docs are massively out of date and unhelpful.