I'm learning to program on Python: Introduction

Anton Mukhataev restarts his own blog. Now he will promote his hobby - programming.

Recently, the well -known rule of 80/20: 80% of working time, employees perform their direct duties, and the remaining 20% ​​are engaged in third -party things related to the site. So, our editor Grisha Proprokov has already prepared the sixth issue of podcast, which is getting better. And now I will constantly talk about my hobby - programming - and why today it is necessary to program not only programmers.

Look at Me writes a lot about the fact that programming languages ​​become the same as foreign languages ​​in the 1990s and 2000s: to become a cool specialist, you need to know at least the basics. To be honest: the specialists with whom I spoke do not always agree with this. But they are in solidarity in the fact that programming develops thinking and logic, not to mention the fact that this is just a very interesting activity.

I'll start with the background. Apart from school and university acquaintances with Basic and Pascal, from which, in my opinion, there are more harm than benefits, then I have basic knowledge in three languages: C, Objective-C and Swift. I can write simple programs and applications for myself - what I do in my free time. A couple of weeks ago, I decided that the Xcode ecosystem was boring to me, and I wanted to try something else.

The choice fell on Python, about which I heard a lot of good. Now this language takes 6th place in the authoritative Tiobe rating: there is only Java ahead of it, for which I do not want to take up yet, and the family of C-and the main language of 2014, JavaScript, is a line below. Such a high place does not surprise: Python is used in almost all large IT companies, it is based on services that everyone uses every day (for example, YouTube), and most importantly-it has a very low entry threshold. Over the past two weeks, I have studied the basics of the language and now I am finishing a course on it. I came to the conclusion that this is an ideal language for those who have never programmed, but want to start - and that's why:

Start working with Python is easier. It is enough to download the distribution on the official website , start the command line, dial “Python3” - and you can start.

Python has pure syntax. This was one of the goals of the creator of the language Gvido Van Rossum. Unlike c-like languages, the code blocks in Python are not released by figure brackets, but by gaps or tabs that are preceded by a colon. This not only facilitates the code, but also forces the programmer to competently organize it - otherwise it will be impossible to work. And this is not to mention the fact that in Python it is not necessary to complete each line with a comma point, and, for example, to declare the method easily, unlike the same Objective-C-those who did this in it will understand me. In theory, Python can even read a person who is not familiar with programming.

Python supports several programming paradigms. Studying Python, you will lay the foundations in your head, which you can then use in other languages: the main types of data, conditional operators and cycle operators, classes, functions and methods, exceptions processing and much more.

A bunch of convenient functions and libraries that facilitate the work - from generating random numbers from the Random library to the built -in Enumerate () function, which facilitates the code in cycles - you do not need to specifically create a variable with the number of cycles.

Active community, developing language. Everything that happens with it is regulated by the PEP - Python Enhancement Proposal system ("Proposals for the improvement of Python"). After a thorough discussion, new PEP is added to the language documentation that standardize the language and introduce good tones. Thanks to this, Python is constantly updated and keeps up with the times - although he is almost 25 years old.

Surely there are other advantages -for example, well-known web frames like Django and Flask, but I have not worked with them yet.

How is everything that I told is connected with the look at me? The fact is that the work of any editor is full of routine, actions, repeating from day to day. The programming has the DRY - Don'T Repeat Yourself rule. Its essence is that if a piece is repeated in the code at least once, then this piece must be turned into a function. If good programmers follow this rule, then all the editors I know is violated. The routine that is easy to automate is an unacceptable luxury in 2015. And therefore, in this blog, every time I will give myself small tasks that will help to facilitate the work of our editors, and you will monitor how I fulfill them. So I want to show that programming is useful to everyone and in everything that has long been no Rocket Science, as some believe.

But about the errors related to programming, somehow next time. In the meantime, I will give myself a task for the next blog output. The first thing I want to do is a script that would prepare the text for editing. I am going to improve it over time, but I’ll start with one simple thing that will show Python's strength and beauty. Many editions have a “black list” with words that they never use - Look at Me also has it. The problem is that from time to look for these words in the texts, especially when you have to deal with new authors (or when the old ones persistently continue to use these words). By the next release, I will write a simple script that will highlight the prohibited words in the text of Caps Lock - so it will be easier to find and remove them.

And by tradition - two banal lines of code:

Best_website = "Look at Me"
Print ("Hello, {}!". Format (Best_website))