LogFAQs > #955783106

1337toothbrush posted...

I actually hate Python because of its performance issues, dynamic typing, use of indents to indicate blocks of code, and some other things. It's a decent learning language, I suppose, but particularly the lack of type notation doesn't force beginners to think enough about their datatypes and I think that'll come back to bite them. Python's excuse for enforcing indents is to get programmers into good habits, but formatters can do that stuff automatically. Meanwhile it's harder for tools to automatically determine what the intent of the programmer is with dynamic typing (e.g. did you mean to assign a string to a variable that held a number or was it a goof?).

I support Python as a foot in the door language and then you move to something like C++, Java, or C# (Microsoft Java) for Data structures level stuff. IDE's help a lot with telling people "wait a second this type returned doesn't match this type you are expecting" as they are coding.

I disagree with it being a bad starter language. There is a lot of confidence and basic programming skills to be gained by having someone do things like the TC is doing (taking inputs, assigning them to variables, and then doing something, even prints with the outputs) or working with lists or arrays or whatever data structures.

The indentation mattering stuff is super annoying but it actually does help someone that is learning to program in terms of teaching them to write code that is readable and if you are doing it in an IDE (which you should be if you are under the age of 50) you should be auto formatting every line you write anyways to see what indentation it is at.