Greetings

[hanginthere]

I am a retired (since 2008) computer programmer who learned the art/science way back in the stone age when punch cards and paper tape were still being used in production. I have programmed in FORTRAN, APL, PL/I, COBOL, SQL, Paradox, vb.NET, Python, C and C++, and dabbled in a few others like REXX. Also too many flavours of Assembler to remember. I did real time system programming on an AGC/SCADA system for 20 years before moving to Windows desktops. My current language of choice is Python/wxPython. In my previous life I was also a Windows Domain sysadmin and dbadmin. I also provided desktop support for our provincial electric utility control centre.

These days I am just happy to answer Python questions in particular, and programming in general, although as an admitted dinosaur I am pretty much out of the loop when it comes to web programming and non-Windows systems. With luck I'll be able to contribute a helping hand.

 

[Malcolm]

Welcome to Code Forum!
Happy to have you join us. We look forward to seeing you around; I'm sure many Code Forum users will appreciate your help. If I may, how long were you a computer programmer?

I tried dipping my toes into Python but always fell short of making anything useful. Any advice?

 

[BorkedSystem32]

Welcome to CF, @hanginthere!

With knowledge of that many languages, are you sure you're not a computer in disguise? I'm sure many other people will welcome your knowledge and expertise.

Welcome again to CF and take care!

I tried dipping my toes into Python but always fell short of making anything useful. Any advice?

Once you've learned the essentials that you would learn for any other language(arrays/lists, control flow, loops, functions, input/output, file handling), then you can make anything really.

@Malcolm, Python works best as a scripting language; not a language for full-blown applications, so you would typically use it for automating tasks that would take you longer to do manually: sorting through files, searching for patterns in text, commanding system processes, etc. These sort of tasks are done through the terminal, although you can add a GUI on top either by using wxPython or Tkinter if it helps make your program easier to use - doing this, you're already gaining experience with a GUI library and with Python's standard libraries(what standard libraries you use though depend on what it is exactly you're looking to do).

As with anything, start small and with the main components that will make the core of your program, then add the fancy stuff later on. Hope this helps! 🙂

 

[Malcolm]

Welcome to CF, @hanginthere!

With knowledge of that many languages, are you sure you're not a computer in disguise? I'm sure many other people will welcome your knowledge and expertise.

Welcome again to CF and take care!


Once you've learned the essentials that you would learn for any other language(arrays/lists, control flow, loops, functions, input/output, file handling), then you can make anything really.

@Malcolm, Python works best as a scripting language; not a language for full-blown applications, so you would typically use it for automating tasks that would take you longer to do manually: sorting through files, searching for patterns in text, commanding system processes, etc. These sort of tasks are done through the terminal, although you can add a GUI on top either by using wxPython or Tkinter if it helps make your program easier to use - doing this, you're already gaining experience with a GUI library and with Python's standard libraries(what standard libraries you use though depend on what it is exactly you're looking to do).

As with anything, start small and with the main components that will make the core of your program, then add the fancy stuff later on. Hope this helps! 🙂

Thanks for the help! 🙂

 

[hanginthere]

I strongly disagree about the "automating tasks" comment. I have developed several full blown applications using Python/wxPython. I wrote a Sudoku tool that is quite useful for solving those puzzles. It doesn't do any of the thinking. I just provides a GUI where, instead of repeatedly writing/erasing on paper, you click tiles to eliminate unwanted digits. I wrote a movie database app to display my movie library and fetch meta data from IMDB. I wrote a video library search/play GUI for my home movies, and a GUI for tagging my thousands of photos. I am in the process of writing an app (with GUI) to maintain a database of my photos so I can easily search for similar images. In the mean time, my older son is studying machine learning with Python and PyTorch so he can develop applications in his field (computational biophysics).