{"id":5130,"date":"2018-01-29T22:32:25","date_gmt":"2018-01-29T22:32:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=5130"},"modified":"2018-02-07T07:30:23","modified_gmt":"2018-02-07T07:30:23","slug":"python-not-as-simple-as-basic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=5130","title":{"rendered":"Python: Not As Simple As BASIC?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently dived into the rabbit hole of educational computers and came across a site which made a big song and dance about how Python<\/a> is a great deal more complicated than BASIC<\/a>. Well that is perhaps arguably correct, but the comparison they made was grossly unfair :-<\/p>\n

#!\/usr\/bin\/env python\r\n#-*- coding: UTF-8 -*-\r\n\r\nfrom random import randint\r\nfrom time import sleep\r\nimport sys\r\n\r\nstring = \"Hello World!\"\r\nwhile true:\r\n  attr = str(randint(30,48))\r\n  out = \"\\x1b[%sm%s\\x1b[0m\" % (attr, string)\r\n  sys.stdout.write(out)\r\n  sys.stdout.flush()\r\n\r\n  sleep(1)<\/pre>\n
Now for the criticisms :-<\/p>\n
    \n
  1. The first line (“#!\/usr\/bin\/env …”) is nothing to do with Python; and in fact a BASIC program should also include this if it wants to run in the same way as a Python program under Linux. The “#!” is in fact a directive to the Linux kernel to tell it what script to pass the rest of the file through.<\/li>\n
  2. The second line (“# -*-…”) also has nothing to do with Python; it is a directive to an editor to tell it to use the UTF-8 character set. Why doesn’t the basic equivalent also include this?<\/li>\n
  3. Now onto the Python itself … first of all there are a whole bunch of imports which are done in the verbose way just so that you can call\u00a0sleep<\/em> rather than\u00a0time.sleep<\/em>; I generally prefer the later (which would result in the\u00a0import time<\/em> rather than\u00a0from time import sleep<\/em>). But yes, in Python you have to import lots of stuff to get anything done, and it would be helpful for quick and dirty scripts if you could just\u00a0import lots<\/em> to get a fair amount of ordinary stuff loaded.<\/li>\n
  4. The rest of the code is … um … obviously designed to make Python look bad and glossing over the fact that Python runs in the Linux runtime environment whereas the BASIC equivalent does not – it has a BASIC runtime environment.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    That last point is worth going into more detail on – the BASIC code was written for a BASIC runtime environment, and\u00a0one<\/em> method of sending output to the screen. Linux has\u00a0many<\/em> ways of writing to the screen, and the chosen method above is perhaps historically the worst (it only works for devices that understand the escape sequences; there is a\u00a0curses<\/em> library for doing this properly).<\/p>\n
    So is Python unsuited to a quick and easy learning environment? A quick hackers language? As it is, perhaps not, but that is not quite what Python is designed to be. And with a suitable set of modules, Python\u00a0could<\/em> be suitable :-<\/p>\n
    import lots\r\n\r\nwhite True:\r\n  screen.ink(random.choice(inkcolours))\r\n  screen.paper(random.choice(papercolours))\r\n  screen.print(\"Hello World!\")\r\n\r\n  time.sleep(1)\r\n<\/pre>\n
    (That’s entirely hypothetical of course as there is no “screen” module)<\/p>\n
    I’m not qualified to judge whether BASIC or Python are better languages for beginners – I’ve been programming for around 35 years, and the BASIC I remember was very primitive. But at least when you compare the two languages, make the comparison a fair one.
    \n\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
    I recently dived into the rabbit hole of educational computers and came across a site which made a big song and dance about how Python is a great deal more complicated than BASIC. Well that is perhaps arguably correct, but the comparison they made was grossly unfair :- #!\/usr\/bin\/env python #-*- coding: UTF-8 -*- from […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[315,407],"class_list":["post-5130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-it","tag-basic","tag-python","category-4-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1f2KI-1kK","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5130"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5135,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5130\/revisions\/5135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}