[klrr]

I tried it as "first language" and it's a freaking pain, I still don't understand the "everything is an object" stuff and why to use modules for everything instead of solving problems with your own code. BASIC is way better for beginner's, especially kids.

[volaski]

1. If you think Python is a pain, I don't think there is any other language you can learn. I've learned lots of different languages, but Python was one of the easiest to pick up and get started--not so different from BASIC. 2. Unless things have changed since I last worked with python, your statement "Everything is an object" is not true. Actually this is one thing I like about Python over Ruby (In Ruby, everything actually is an object.) As far as I know, Python has primitives, and therefore not as confusing as ruby for beginners. 3. Here's a problem: "Build a program that fetches content from a web page.". Try building that without using any modules. Maybe even try that with your BASIC if you want. By using modules you just reuse what people have already built, and can solve aforementioned problem with just a couple of lines.

[klrr]

I get your point, but why should you even bother using modules when you are trying to learn programming? The scenario you suggests isen't a task for a beginner, especially not a kid with no experience. Anyway, I just want to say a quick apology, I relize my first post sounded a bit more aggresive than intended, sorry about that.

[Jach]

What sorts of problems and modules did you have in mind? Sure some modules can spoil the learning fun of the problem, but in most cases they seem to enhance it. Implementing the sqrt function is interesting to me (and in fact it's done early on in the SICP book for college freshmen), I also think it's interesting how other math functions can be implemented, but would you want kids who may not even have a solid grasp of what a logarithm is to implement the log function? How about making a 2D game? Why wouldn't you use PyGame?

[klrr]

The thing is, using a function like sqrt is totally ok, but what I was more pointing to is that many tutorials teaches how to use module's in the very beginning and encuaraging(sorry for my bad english) using them to rather bypass problems instead of solving them. As for pygame, all tutorials I found said prior OOP knowledge was essential, which I had yet to understand.

[Jach]

I'm still having a hard time following... Maybe you could give a specific example of a problem that modules bypass? Is it just simply the idea of modules and the annoyance of having your code in multiple places and naive tutorials wanting to put everything in classes when you just want to solve one problem you thought was pretty simple?

For PyGame, I wouldn't say it's that essential, but there's a tendency for most tutorials to classify everything when often there's no reason to. The amount of OOP knowledge needed is very basic and following the simple examples is a great way to learn OOP in the first place. But I remember feeling frustrated with all the indirection and namespacing (part of the "module" frustration you had perhaps?) when I first looked at Python, having come previously from PHP. "pygame.display.set_mode() is dumb, why can't I just type make_screen()?"

[klrr]

If I had more time I could gladly try to find all tutorials I'm targeting at, this ain't targeted at the book mentioned in the story, that one I haven't tried. The thing I personally found hard is that these OOP and modules things come up in many tutorials in general, not all, I can see that both OOP and using modules instead of rewritting stuff that's already made is good, but I don't think that's the way to go for beginner's, BASIC is much better at that.

[int_19h]

Python primitive types are also objects. It's been that way for many years.

[dangayle]

>why to use modules for everything instead of solving problems with your own code.

That simply doesn't make sense. You could make that argument against every single programming language.

[klrr]

True.

[emmelaich]

Just ignore the object stuff when starting. And later, only use when it actually helps.

[ufo]

The way to get around the "everything" is an object thing is to just ignore it. Object Orientation is mostly a convenience at that level of programming and you can do almost everything without even bothering about it.

[klrr]

Indeed, it's still very annoying though, I can see how OOP can be good for larger scale but when you want to learn pragramming it shouldn't be something that gets in the way, it did for me.

[JulianWasTaken]

Can you elaborate? I'm curious to hear ways in which it got in the way for you.

[klrr]

Sure, I spent about 1 week learning the very basics about variables, loops and functions etc. After that I started looking for a harder challange and finded a few fun problems in some tutorials. I got very angry when I tried to solve them, since I pretty much didn't knew how to program, just about the basics of pythons syntax. What made me even more angry was, when I tried to find the solution many people suggested using all different modules and learning how to use it, instead of telling how to solve it with what I thought was programming. Also this OOP stuff was also very hard for me, since I only found. Tutorials which assumed you knew OOP in another language already.

[JulianWasTaken]

I see. So your difficulty really doesn't have to do with OOP at all then. The OP was saying that OOP doesn't really change your ability to use a language procedurally. It doesn't seem from your answer that you had difficulty with that.

It does sound like you had difficulty with managing complexity. That's definitely valid. It's hard to learn a bunch of modules when you're first starting out. I guess for that you just need to add a sprinkling of common sense where warranted, and manage the amount of new things you're learning.

Anyways, just was curious to hear where people have difficulty when starting out, so thanks.