Why Not Python?, Part 1
It's been 20 years or more since I wrote my first few hundred lines of code in C, so it's about time I learned a more modern language, maybe something object oriented. But what?
One of the great things about running free software is a lot of programming languages are included on the installation media. It's like in the good old days. Back then if you bought, say, an HP 3000, you got Fortran, SPL/3000, a linker, a debugger and printed manuals, not to mention support for shared libraries since 1972. But I digress.
Today, if you buy a proprietary system and want to program it in, say, ANSI C, you might have to shell out hundreds or even thousands of dollars for some vendor's compiler. That's the case unless you can find free software, such as the GNU compiler collection (GCC), ported to your particular platform.
Now, in the good new days, I have C, C++, Ruby, Perl, Python, Pascal and Fortran 77 on my SuSE 8.0 CDs. I also have Tcl, Scheme, Smalltalk, Modula-2, Forth, Prolog, REXX, LISP, Ada95 and so on.
So a couple of years ago, when my teenage daughter became interested in programming, we worked out a few "toy" programs in Python. I had heard it would be a better choice than Perl for a first language. Python is current, it has object-oriented features, books are available for it and I'd seen some recent articles praising it. So I decided to give it a whirl on something a little bigger. I'll share that journey with you in Part 2 of this article, but for now I thought I'd revisit our answers to the Coconuts problem.
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