The Site With the Lamp

August 18, 2005

The last time I learned a new programming language was in 1999. That was fortran. I was working on a quantum mechanics research project at university and Fortran is the language of choise when complex numbers are involved.

Unlike almost every other programming language I have seen, Fortran has a native type for complex numbers. That makes it much much faster than anything else. That's just the tip of the iceberg. If you are into numerical methods, Fortran is definitely the language of choice but fortunately or unfortunately I have forgotten most of what I once knew about fortran or Quantum.

Python is the first time I am looking at a new programming language since 1999. And since I have recently gone past the 30 year mark, there is a good chance that this may be the last programming language I will ever learn. Then again I am full of suprises.

The python tutorial is full of suprises too. I have read through four chapters already but I am yet to see a hello world program. Another suprise was the notation for the for loop. This looks more like shell scripting than real programming. But I am just a newbie, so ignore my comments. Wonder what will happen if I post in a message board. I have only ever asked 1-2 two questions in message boards and mailing lists but i'v responded to thousands.