I'm about to start working my way through Black Hat Python soon as recommended by a friend. Nothing too difficult, but fun if you're into cybersecurity stuff. You can find it on https://annas-archive.pk/ if you're interested.
Thanks, I'll look into it. Think Python is decent for its explanations but when it comes to the exercises. I wouldn't be surprised if beginners were scared off because of them. I found a copy of Python Crash Course because I googled what are good Python books. Think Python feels more of a study review for Python while this one seems to be a full on guide.
ngl, I would recommend that you pick up the book "Automating the Boring Stuff with Python" and learn from there because the best way to learn a language (assuming ur a complete noob) is to actually try and write something meaningful or useful than only be front-loaded with "this is what tuples do", "this is a for loop", "this is a list here's all of the related functions". If you actually write something like a web scraper for a page you'll end up writing something, ask yourself, "well shit, there's gotta' be a better way to do this than writing 80 for loops to get the data out of a div".
I am not a complete noob but its been awhile since I have done a lot Python. Its more of finishing off learning the arrays and files. I use ChatGPT to help debug. Yes it is dog shit but it being dog shit gives me reason to read the docs or figure out something.
My experience is that they all have their faults. Claude wasted a bunch of my credits at work by getting into some stupid loop of it misunderstanding the AWS documentation.
Python not calling its maps “maps” and instead calling them “dictionaries” will forever piss me off. I will say that it's not the absolute warzone of Python 2.x vs 3.x that meant using libraries difficult.
C# did this too, always bothered me when I used to work with it.
C# does a great many things wrong especially considering that it came about after C++ was mature and its Java ripoff nature.
The biggest problem with C# I found is that 50% of developers I worked with were ex-VB6 devs that would put 500 lines in each switch case in a WebControl, so most code behind files were 1000s of lines long. The other 40% would create these DI monstrosities. The rest would try to turn it into F#. So every code base was schizophrenic. The language itself is fine, but you end up writing endless boilerplate.
What's with ex-VB people writing overly long blocks of code? I've seen them write a function that had 2500 LoC and then fight tooth 'n nail against breaking it into smaller functions. Anyway, I have more experience as a Java dev and everyone wants to shoehorn in a design pattern, object-oriented fuckery, or add a new library.
I don't get it. A lot of old programming languages were very script like (I learned with BBC BASIC back in the 90s). But even that had Sub Routines.
I was guilty of some of those in the past. These days I avoid libraries unless it is fairly standard.
my best guess is it had something todo with the VB compiler, or they just got used to writing the code that way on older machines which may not have had the most robust text editors.
Was there anyone who was a 'Visual Basic programmer' who ever had any formal education in computer engineering/even 'computer programming'? Most every old salt I ever met who was a 'Visual Basic programmer' was just someone who got angry at how difficult it was to do a business process with Excel formulas and macros, and just gradually figured out a way to create processes that would behave like a very very complex VBA macro by hitting their head against a wall over time (this process basically describes me, but with more recent tools like Powershell/C#).
response.write
"Our IDE is Notepad++"
No, they're usually someone that "is good at the computer" who is the type that would be banging out a shitty python script today. I briefly had a job where I worked with some Classic ASP and those people couldn't follow the simplest helper functions or when I dropped the thermonuclear warhead of a switch statement. One of the guys I worked with crashed out when my helper function didn't work because, get this for real quote, "How was I supposed to know that parameter was needed?".
Was checking this out since the author publishes it online for free on https://automatetheboringstuff.com/. Lo and behold:
Most people who learned with classic VB are not really professional software engineers. They learned by doing, got good results, which is great. But they never really properly updated their skills.
Java these days is all about spring framework magically invoking autowired bean factories of massive chunks of boilerplate. It sucks so much.
Why don't those boomer fucks that self-taught VB ever make the jump to something modern? It's not that hard. The thing I love most about programming is that I get to learn constantly, they think that they learned how to do something the shit way back in the mid-90s and should be able to do that for their whole careers.
I think a lot of the time people kind of give up or have other priorities. I am competent programming in most mainstream programming languages. I am getting burned out though, mainly because of the absolute uninspired shite that people have me build, or I have to fix outsourced Indian slop. I feel actively held back by retards. When I go to job interviews, I often either sail through (this is bad because the company is crap) or I get bombarded with leet style code questions, or super low level stuff on how the GC or whatever assigns slice length or some other inane shit that nobody gives one shit about.