I'm an eternally novice programmer: I only do prototypes. 15y ago I wrote my first program. Since then I learned a few languages, but never did I want to become an expert: I was always trying to do relatively easy stuff like a website, a numeric algorithm to take some decision depending on some data, or a macro inside some third-party software. It was all very unintuitive, filled with stuff "I would grasp later" - which I never did, because I didn't have the need. I still have zero clues on what a memory pointer is, for instance, and do not intend to learn it - nevertheless, I have successfully built a few working programs.
I absolutely hated working with html+css+javascript, and the most intuitive language I've used is Python, but I had a few big surprises/headaches while learning it (to my level) by doing. From the top of my head, the whole scope stuff was completely non-intuitive to learn (actually I didn't learn: I just made sure it was working properly by extensive testing and experimentation), aswell as how assigning and modifying lists work.
numbers = [1,2,3,4]
my_numbers = numbers
my_numbers[0] = 999
I would never expect, at first, numbers[0] to print 999 after these statements, etc.
Something else that bothered me was how some methods worked. If I want to make a string uppercase, why wouldn't upper(strvar, other arguments if existant) work, instead of strvar.upper()?, if that's the way the user will implement his function calls?
Of course I don't want to dispute how it should be, because I'm not an expert. But it seems to me a much better introductory programming language than those currently available is possible: all it has to do is limit itself to only novices. And also they shouldn't take "novices" as people with PhD in biology trying to get into datascience - these are not novices at all: they know a lot about math, for instance. The focus should be on simple operations, solely.
Hackernews breakline editing behavior is also unintuitive btw.
> I would never expect, at first, numbers[0] to print 999 after these statements, etc.
You are not alone! I've always disagreed with the idea that imperative programming is "more intuitive", more familiar to many perhaps. In a functional programming language, modifications to lists/collections result in new copies (with maximal sharing) and do not mutate the original. Such "persistent" collections have to be designed and implemented to make these operations cheap. Copying an array is typically not cheap and so Python just creates a new reference (pointer) for my_numbers.
I absolutely hated working with html+css+javascript, and the most intuitive language I've used is Python, but I had a few big surprises/headaches while learning it (to my level) by doing. From the top of my head, the whole scope stuff was completely non-intuitive to learn (actually I didn't learn: I just made sure it was working properly by extensive testing and experimentation), aswell as how assigning and modifying lists work.
numbers = [1,2,3,4]
my_numbers = numbers
my_numbers[0] = 999
I would never expect, at first, numbers[0] to print 999 after these statements, etc.
Something else that bothered me was how some methods worked. If I want to make a string uppercase, why wouldn't upper(strvar, other arguments if existant) work, instead of strvar.upper()?, if that's the way the user will implement his function calls?
Of course I don't want to dispute how it should be, because I'm not an expert. But it seems to me a much better introductory programming language than those currently available is possible: all it has to do is limit itself to only novices. And also they shouldn't take "novices" as people with PhD in biology trying to get into datascience - these are not novices at all: they know a lot about math, for instance. The focus should be on simple operations, solely.
Hackernews breakline editing behavior is also unintuitive btw.