Antigravity away!

[wpl510]

For various reasons, it's been years since I've done much of anything in the way of computer programming- and this probably wasn't helped by the fact that the one language I studied in college (Visual Basic 6) was heavily altered before I'd even graduated.

On the other hand, the long delay does make for some pleasant surprises.  I recently ran into

Comments

[ksledgemoore]

I'm using python to automate some stuff as well and it probably saves me nearly as much time, too! Yay for programming!

[wpl510]

I didn't know you were into python now! I don't suppose you know anything about adding a GUI?

I'd like to pretend that I want the program to be user-friendly, but really, it's just easier to add Easter Eggs when the user has something to interact with. ;)

[drenilop]

Hooray for automation and shortcuts! My RA made a Word macro that converts statistical output into beautifully formatted tables and even does the rounding for you... An hour of tedium now takes about 15 seconds. Computers are lovely things ...MOST of the time.

[wpl510]

I really do wish that more majors would require a basic class in programming- my biggest regret is not creating this program sooner, as I've been doing things the hard way for four years.

This will probably pay me back in saved time in four days. (!)

Speaking of time- when you have a chance, could you let me know about the concert/baseball game?

[grey_ghost]

For various reasons, it's been years since I've done much of anything in the way of computer programming- and this probably wasn't helped by the fact that the one language I studied in college (Visual Basic 6) was heavily altered before I'd even graduated.

i know the feeling. i almost made it through a computer science degree through c, c++, and java, 5 years ago, and i think my skills are now obsolete.

do you suggest python, though? if you didn't know any coding, would it be useful to learn?

[wpl510]

It really depends on what you're doing, but overall, Python was pretty impressive. My skills were quite rusty, but I picked it up in just a few days without trying very hard- given a knowledge of basic programming concepts, the syntax was almost spookily intuitive. xkcd doesn't lie!

As alluded to above, though, the way that python stores data was a bit different than what I was used to- you may want to read up on how python stores info in lists. (I created massive headaches at first by not realizing how much VB6 arrays sucked. Seriously.)

There is a lot of good documentation, and in particular, libraries and sample code were readily available to automate some of what I wanted to do- always a good thing! If you need development tools, try the Pydev add-on to the Eclipse package; that gave me syntax highlighting, autocompletion, and some debugging tools, for free.