How Much Python Do You Need To Know To Be Useful?

Nerval's Lobster writes: Since Python is a general-purpose language, it finds its way into a whole lot of different uses and industries. That means the industry in which you work has a way of determining what you actually need to know in terms of the language, as developer Jeff Cogswell explains in a new Dice piece. For example, if you're hired to write apps that interact with operating systems and monitor devices, you might not need to know how to use the Python modules for scientific and numerical programming. In a similar fashion, if you're hired to write Python code that interacts with a MySQL database, then you won't need to master how it works with CouchDB. The question is, how much do you need to know about Python's basics? Cogswell suggests there are three basic levels to learning Python: Learn the core language itself, such as the syntax and basic types (and the difference between Python 2 and Python 3); learn the commonly used modules, and familiarize yourself with other modules; learn the bigger picture of software development with Python, such as including Python in a build process, using the pip package manager, and so on. But is that enough?

Comments

trick question

[hypergreatthing]

The answer has to be 0 right?

Re:trick question

[Anonymous Coward]

I know 0 hours worth of python and still was the only person to present an all python solution at a job interview asking people to solve a problem in python.

I think zero is close to the amount needed to be competitive with those that *only* know python.

Re:trick question

[TechyImmigrant]

The answer has to be 0 right?

No. The answer would be : None

Re:trick question

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, fuck python. I never touch the stuff. A colleague was doing some python and I learned that they make you indent four spaces or a tab and you can't mix it in your file. This is done instead of using braces to control the scope of code. All I can say is fuck that, the author was trying to be sneaky to get people to write properly formatted code. If you can't properly format your code to begin with you shouldn't be coding, it's like consistency 101. Python is a 'nanny language'.

Re:trick question

[sinrakin]

If you need to know it, you need to know it. If I hired someone who didn't know some piece of Python that was needed, I'd totally sit his ass down and make him spend the 5 minutes it would take to learn it. No excuses.

Re:trick question

[theendlessnow]

IndentationError: unexpected indent

Re:trick question

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer has to be 0 right?

Close: you just need to know about Hy. Get the good parts of Python without the whitespace bullshit. You have to be willing to use a lisp dialect, but I'd rather do that than use pure Python any day.

Re:trick question

[TechyImmigrant]

IndentationError: unexpected indent

:retab

Re:trick question

[ArcadeMan]

Someone should make a whitespace language comprised of only spaces and tabs.

Re:trick question

[RoccamOccam]

No, you're missing the point. It's not acting as a nanny, it's merely removing the redundancy of having both reasonably-indented code and start/stop tokens. That's it.

One of the interesting things about Python is that very few new programming languages use required-indentation, probably due to fear of backlash by the narrow-minded. I suspect that this tends to help keep the Python community (for whom this is a great feature) from dribbling away to the "new hotness" and may be why Python keeps getting stronger and stronger (in contrast to old competitors like Ruby and Perl).

Re:trick question

[richpoore]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...

Re:trick question

[NotDrWho]

I'm thinking this is one of those Google brain-teaser questions. The one of us that comes up with the most creative answer to this impossible question may get a job offer!

I'm going to go with "As much as you need to build an app that teaches you any other computer language."

Re:trick question

[naris]

I would prefer a reasonable language where space/tab confusions don't turn into weird, hard to debug issues. Has a compiler that confirms the code is used correctly before using it and doesn't automatically assume things that might or might not be correct -- should "10" + "15" == "1015" or should it be 25?

Re:trick question

[Anonymous Coward]

If errors in consistent coding practices are hard to debug issues for you, then your code is a hard to debug issue for everyone else.

Re:trick question

[PopeRatzo]

The answer has to be 0 right?

Not if you're going to program in Python. But "less than you think" would be a pretty good answer. You're better off knowing Math, because you can always learn Python as you need it. And someone who knows Python and a lot of Math has a much better career path than someone who knows a lot of Python and a little Math. I'm shocked at how much money an entry level Python programmer who's done a masters in say, linear algebra will have thrown at him.

Re:trick question

[RoccamOccam]

Well, I can certainly understand a preference, but you're going too far to imply that Python is not a "reasonable" language.

Avoiding hard tabs in your code is all that you need to do and that's quite a simple thing for anyone able to actually write useful code. I've been coding in Python for years and years and have only run across that problem a handful of times, many years ago. Once the official guideline became "no hard tabs", the problem went away even for newbies.

Python doesn't make you guess 'should "10" + "15" == "1015" or should it be 25'. It is a strongly-typed language.

If you absolutely need a compiler, then Python is not a fit for you. You missed on all of your other complaints, however.

Re:trick question

[telchine]

I find that knowing the majority of the Dead Parrot sketch and the main chorus of the Lumberjack song gets me through fine :)

Re:trick question

[rduke15]

should "10" + "15" == "1015" or should it be 25?

What a strange question. Obviously, 25 since you are using an arithmetic operator. So surely, you wanted to do arithmetic, right?
If you had wanted "1015", you would obviously have used a string operator instead ( "10" . "15" ).

Are there languages so stupid that they can't tell the difference and you have to spell it out for them in every boring detail?

PS: And if you had wanted to get 327680, you would have used the binary shift operator: "10""15"

Re:trick question

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody programs in Python. Those are script monkeys with poor judgement.

Zero is a good minimum. As a maximum, I'd say:

1) it's performance is 1000x worse than compiled languages and 30% less than equivalent interpreted languages
2) range vs xrange lack of performance and forward compatibility makes it unsuitable for long term development
3) whitespace is significant
4) memory use is often exceptionally high for trivial programs
5) I/O and threads are completely fucked - don't try. Python keeps iterating in compatibility-breaking changes to get this right

Re:trick question

[__aaclcg7560]

What a strange question. Obviously, 25 since you are using an arithmetic operator. So surely, you wanted to do arithmetic, right?

Wrong. Quoted numbers are a string operation ("10" + "15" == "1015" is correct). Unquoted numbers are an arithmetic operation (i.e., 10 + 15 == 25). You can cast a string to an integer (i.e., int("10") + int("15") == 25) or cast an integer to a string (i.e., str(10) + str(15) == "1015").

If you had wanted "1015", you would obviously have used a string operator instead ( "10" . "15" ).

The dot string operator works in PHP.

Re:trick question

[sconeu]

I'd go with the Argument Clinic, and the Bridge of Death, myself...

Re:trick question

[rduke15]

Maybe in one of these weird languages where it's not the operator which determines the operation to be done. Or one of these annoying languages in which you need silly stuff like str(10)... :-)

I feel for the poor poor programmer who didn't get the chance to understand Perl.

And BTW, /. ate my binary operator in the post above. It was meant to be:

to get 327680, you would have used the binary shift operator: "10"<<"15"

Re:trick question

[__aaclcg7560]

I feel for the poor poor programmer who didn't get the chance to understand Perl.

The last time I saw Perl was in the classroom ten years ago. Alas, the class got cancelled due to a lack of students and never learned the language. I'm somewhat surprised to recently learn that Perl was still around.

Re:trick question

[reboot246]

If you don't know the "Sit On My Face" song, you're missing a lot of fun.

Re:trick question

[Anonymous Coward]

You're wrong. And python got this and so many other things wrong. Due to this and, e.g., the incompetance of whoever implemented the netrc library, I don't trust the competence of anything written by a python "programmer". The indentation gives you the illusion of good code. Just like GUI tools that I'm forced to use give you the illusion of getting rid of all that "messy code".

Re:trick question

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh...and the docs (i.e. pydoc) suck.

Re:trick question

[ArcadeMan]

Alright...

Someone should send me a few hundred thousand bitcoins at D9scjyKETYZesSmhjCR4vye4bc6iDqXPd6.

Re:trick question

[ArcadeMan]

I meant DogeCoins, sorry!

Re:trick question

[ArcadeMan]

Still, if someone does want to send me a few hundred thousand bitcoins, the address is 18LQHMjKSCSU3g4f29TfmtfxHXUfnh7juB.

Re:trick question

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an EX-parrot you blockhead!

Re:trick question

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe in one of these weird languages where it's not the operator which determines the operation to be done.

Funny, in upper-level math courses it's both the type AND the operator that determines what operations is to be performed. It only makes sense that programming languages would mirror that. I'd content that it's a weird programming language where the operator alone determines the operation to be performed.

Re:trick question

[Pseudonym]

Ah, but "competitive" is not the same as "useful".

How much python do you need to know to be a useful programmer? The answer to that is: more than every python programmer I've ever met.

Re:trick question

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny, because I was just talking to it, and Perl is surprised that you are still around.

Re:trick question

[goose-incarnated]

No, you're missing the point. It's not acting as a nanny, it's merely removing the redundancy of having both reasonably-indented code and start/stop tokens. That's it.

Sorry, it keeps the start tokens and only does away with the end tokens[1]. Logically, this does not make sense. Logical people hate python.

[1]Some may even argue that it keeps the end tokens too, only it makes them invisible using whitespace rules.

Re:trick question

[fyngyrz]

So. How is life in a bubble?

Re:trick question

[serviscope_minor]

No, you're missing the point. It's not acting as a nanny, it's merely removing the redundancy of having both reasonably-indented code and start/stop tokens. That's it.

Unfortunately, from the point of view of parts of my brain (visal cortex?) it not redundancy that's being removed. You see, my brain likes having stuff indented correctly because it is easier to read. My brain also likes having end of block markers since it's easier to visually scan for the end of a block.

With either one but not the other, one can infer indentatation level or end of blocks, because they are indeed redundant. But not to part of my brain: so in order to read the code I have to expend more effort because low level parts of my brain can't do the job.

One of the interesting things about Python is that very few new programming languages use required-indentation, probably due to fear of backlash by the narrow-minded.

It is you who is narrow minded. Apparently you can't conceive people like me who find Python much, much harder to read as a result of that decision.

Re:trick question

[igloo-x]

people like me

No, I'm pretty sure you're the only one with that particular brain issue.

Re:trick question

[Pseudonym]

So. How is life in a bubble?

Actually, I live outside California.

Re:trick question

[__aaclcg7560]

People are always surprised when I exceed their low expectations and raise the bar for them.

Re:trick question

[david_thornley]

The "+" operator has been overloaded in most of the languages I've used. The code for doing a floating-point addition is not the same as for integer addition, and neither are the results (in bit patterns particularly). I've used languages without floating-point numbers and languages without integers (never missing both, although there are languages without either), but not many.

Re:trick question

[Half-pint HAL]

I never could understand how so many people don't recognise that colon is a start-block token. "It's the end of a command that takes a block" is semantic wriggling.

Re:trick question

[Half-pint HAL]

No, I'm pretty sure you're the only one with that particular brain issue.

The entire history of human semiotics is one of multiple redundancy. Look at numbers: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight ... we still haven't repeated any vowel sounds, and we've had a fair mix of consonants too. The differences are bigger than necessary for conveying unique information, even taking into account every single part of information theory. why? Because the brain isn't pure maths, and redundant information can often speed things up as two inputs can reinforce each other.

When all you have is a hammer

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds like a job for Javascript to be honest, Python just isnt up to the task,

real men code in ASM, because you cant

I'm already useful

[plover]

I know C++. To me, anyone who knows python but not C++ is half useless. If you only know Java, you're 25% useless. And if you know only Visual Basic, you're 125% useless.

Re:I'm already useful

[Anonymous Coward]

If all you know is C++ you are about 95% useless. :D

Re:I'm already useful

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you not read his proof? You are only half useless.

Re:I'm already useful

[ADRA]

Spoken by a true pragmatist. I'm glad you're not my hiring manager (though sadly there are many who work under the same broken assumptions). I hate programming languages as much as the next zealot, sure. To assume a systemic bias against those with a specific set of language skills (disregarding experience/domain knowledge/people management/customer interaction/raw productivity/hipster hat collections) may be a little short-sided to the extreme.

Re:I'm already useful

[Anonymous Coward]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! That's so funny because anyone who has ever used Visual Basic is a completely moran!

Re:I'm already useful

[ShanghaiBill]

Did you see "Ex Machina"? They show code on the computer screen, and it is obviously python. So, apparently, python can be used to program hot android chicks. Of course, there were some flaws in the program, but they were fundamental design flaws rather than due to any limitation in the language.

Re:I'm already useful

[Anonymous Coward]

It was an import library

import hotchick

Re:I'm already useful

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously a high level API, the chick was problably written in a mixture of Scala and bash scripts

Re:I'm already useful

[tomhath]

Yea, reminds me of the time a co-worker wrote a little utility in C++. It was only a few dozen lines and took him less than an hour to get it working; I did the same thing in one line of awk in less than a minute.

Re:I'm already useful

[ArcadeMan]

Yeah, stupid morans!

Re:I'm already useful

[Anonymous Coward]

see what it can do.

Re:I'm already useful

[schlachter]

Yeah, I hate it when jobs advertise for X experience in Y language, rather than just asking for a creative, analytical thinker with development experience.

Ok, I'm being partly sarcastic, but in an ideal world, I'd be serious.

Re:I'm already useful

[Anonymous Coward]

But the assumptions aren't necessarily broken.

There are some very important concepts that are handled "under the covers" by languages such as Java and VB. (Garbage collection is one such concept.) I strongly believe that thoroughly understanding those concepts helps promote more disciplined code.

If you "only" know VB and cannot write competent C++ code without significant (re)education, then I will not be confident that the VB code you write is worth much in the first place. (Sure, maybe it is quite good code, but it's not unreasonable of me to assume otherwise.)

However, if you can write thoroughly competent C++ code, then I'm willing to bet that only a minimal amount of additional education will be necessary for you to write competent Java or VB code.

I do believe that a programmer should use the "right tool for the job" and I don't believe in language zealotry, but I do believe that competence in certain languages is a good measure of overall programming competency. VB alone does not carry that weight. Don't pretend otherwise.

Re:I'm already useful

[Anonymous Coward]

Er... whoosh?

Re:I'm already useful

[Livius]

systemic bias against those with a specific set of... skills

That's every job interview.

Re:I'm already useful

[ArcadeMan]

Not so much whoosh as doing a follow-up on the VB reference. VB = Microsoft = USA.

Re:I'm already useful

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. That means you are 200% useless.

Re:I'm already useful

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, if you can live with the braindead nature of these companies, I know a few people who just bluffed their way into these jobs by playing the keyword bingo game, then once there leveraged themselves into god like critical position (far beyond their relative capabilities) and then proceeded to extract huge sums of fear money from the clueless managers that hired them.

The games can go both ways if you want.

Re:I'm already useful

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it. Not everybody from Moran can be a dumbass. Can they?

Re:I'm already useful

[schlachter]

Oh, that sounds great. Pointers please. I've bluffed my way in, but have yet to achieve the god-like position and huge sums of money.

My anaconda don't want none

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you've got buns, hun

Re: My anaconda don't want none

[Anonymous Coward]

I see what you did there...

None

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn a real language instead of a scripting language that will inherently produce buggy code

Re:None

[umghhh]

That is odd. Over 20y in development and QA and I have not seen a language that has not been abused by morons to the point one had to agree with you. Sometimes there is a significant amount of skill required to show that one cannot code (C++ is known for that). Sometimes it is easy - java is like that.
At the same time I have seen amazingly well written code in all of the languages I have worked with.
Even this annoying indentation can be argued to be a good thing especially because there is whole bunch of idiots out there that think that putting a code into readable structures is evil and against nature.

You can get by with:

[xaosflux]

Holy Grail;
Dead Parrot;
Spam;
Ministry of Silly Walks;
and of course Spanish Inquisition.

Re:You can get by with:

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy Grail;
Dead Parrot;
Spam;
Ministry of Silly Walks;
and of course Spanish Inquisition.

Nobody expects the... Dead Parrot! Wait, is that right?

Re:You can get by with:

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition to be on that list...

Re:You can get by with:

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I got everyone beat. I did expect five items on his list:

Holy Grail
Dead Parrot;
Spam;
Ministry of Silly Walks;
Spanish Inquisition;
and Argument Clinic

Re:You can get by with:

[Anonymous Coward]

You needn't bother to remember the name of Johann Gambolputty davon ausfern schpledenschlitt crasscren bonfreidigger dingledangledongledungle burstein von knackerthrasher appelbanger horowitz ticolensic granderknottty spelltinkle grandlich grumpelmeyer spelterwasser kurstlichhimble eisenbahnwagen guten abend bitte ein nurnberger bratwurstle geschpurtenmitz weimachelube hundsfut gumberaber schonendanker kalbsfleich mittleraucher von Hauptkopf of Ulm.

It's not very useful at all.

Re:You can get by with:

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Re:You can get by with:

[Anonymous Coward]

dinsdale!

Re:You can get by with:

[Anonymous Coward]

I did, but then again, I'm just Nobody.

Re:You can get by with:

[ArcadeMan]

Well I got everyone beat. I did expect five items on his list:

Holy Grail
Dead Parrot;
Spam;
Ministry of Silly Walks;
Spanish Inquisition;
and Argument Clinic

No you didn't.

Re:You can get by with:

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you know enough to confuse a cat, you're close to being an expert.

Re:You can get by with:

[R3d M3rcury]

Holy Grail is an absolute requirement. I'll ask about that in interviews. If you can't come up with at least one line from the film, you're definitely not getting the job. I'm not sure Ministry of Silly Walks is necessary, though. It's more of a sight gag and actually requires skill to perform, so it might be a bit much to expect from someone. I might add in "Cheese Shop" and "Bruce"--especially The Philosophers Song.

Re:You can get by with:

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you came in for an argument.

Re:You can get by with:

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't give me that, you snotty faced heap of parrot droppings!

Re:You can get by with:

[Anonymous Coward]

Listen, Lumberjack Song should be really after Holy Grail, possibly before.

Re:You can get by with:

[Anonymous Coward]

nobody does.

Re:You can get by with:

[msk]

Since the parent story appears to be yet another Dice plant, this subthread of responses is by far the most appropriate.

and . . . "you're supposed to 'aggle."

Re:You can get by with:

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as you don't know the killer joke.

Re:You can get by with:

[TeknoHog]

Candid photography. In case you are aware of its existence.

Re:You can get by with:

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes I did

Re:You can get by with:

[reboot246]

I don't dare go there. I want to live a few more years.

But speaking of jokes, why is American beer like having sex in a canoe?
It's fucking close to water!

Re:You can get by with:

[ArcadeMan]

No you didn't!

Re:You can get by with:

[plover]

This is Slashdot. You only get abuse.

Re:You can get by with:

[plover]

If you know Idle (Eric, not the IDE), you get the job automatically. If you can get me tickets to Spamalot.

Re:You can get by with:

[plover]

Well, back in my day there were only three episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus, which we quoted every day at lunch, and we liked it that way.

Re:You can get by with:

[fyngyrz]

What hump?

Re:You can get by with:

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition to be on that list...

Really? No one is going to hit this softball?

Re:You can get by with:

[q4Fry]

Back in my day, there weren't any episodes yet: We had a single copy of the unproofed screenplays from a mimeograph that didn't have any vowels.

Re:You can get by with:

[plover]

A mimeograph? You had it easy. We didn't have a mimeograph, so we had to listen to a bunch of Welshmen sitting around a table telling jokes that had no vowels, and then type them up ourselves.

Monty Python...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is what I read, somehow. All of the lines? Or just the best ones?

...useful for a pub quiz?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Bring out your dead!"

Re:...useful for a pub quiz?

[Dunbal]

We are the knights who say...

Re:...useful for a pub quiz?

[goose-incarnated]

We are the knights who say...

"PING!"

:-)

Re:...useful for a pub quiz?

[fyngyrz]

Knights. Huh. Not for me. I'm just a

shrubber

Oh look, more dice.com crap ...

[Anonymous Coward]

So here's the link with the campaign tracking removed.

It looks like Dice is going to run a series of non-articles detailing what we should know, and have started to embed shit like "?CMPID=AF_SD_UP_JS_AV_OG_DNA_" this in their self-promoting URLs.

Click bait is click bait. Especially when done by sleazy assholes like Dice.

Fuck you, dicebags.

Re:Oh look, more dice.com crap ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed.

I wonder, would it be even better to provide campaign IDs of FUCK_DICE_THIS_CLICK_BLOCKS_YOUR_ADS? It would "send a message", but then again, it would also give them analytics, which I don't want them to have.

Re:Oh look, more dice.com crap ...

[Anonymous Coward]

srsly

fuck dice.

slashdot used to be a fresh spring of interesting information and insightful exchange.

now it's like trying to drink out of a filthy mud puddle. i'm getting more and more dirt stuck in my teeth, it's rather depressing.

Re:Oh look, more dice.com crap ...

[iONiUM]

Almost all of the submitter's posts are articles which have the first link as dice.com with a campaign ad, and then other links to non-news sites (such as in this one with 3 links to python.org).

How is this okay?

Re:Oh look, more dice.com crap ...

[LessThanObvious]

The millennials doing recruiting now days don't even know Dice ever existed, they must be hurting. Then again their shitty clickbait articles force my sympathy filter to off.

Re:Oh look, more dice.com crap ...

[geminidomino]

Fuck you, dicebags

Please don't slander the noble dicebag by associating it with the scum who ruined Slashdot and Sourceforge.

Re:Oh look, more dice.com crap ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think all right-thinking people on this site are sick and tired of being told that ordinary decent people are fed up on this site with being sick and tired of clickbait articles.

I’m certainly not! But I’m sick and tired of being told that I am.

Re:Oh look, more dice.com crap ...

[plover]

I intended to be snarky here, but the more I thought about it, it really is Dice's website. They post stuff, and we keep coming back and reading it, even though we're not paid to. What part of that do you consider "not OK"?

Re:Oh look, more dice.com crap ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Try the Lifestraw, it removes the dirt: http://www.amazon.com/LifeStra...

Re:Oh look, more dice.com crap ...

[fyngyrz]

I didn't come here to read what Dice wrote. I came here to read what you wrote.

For better or worse, slashdot attracts a collection of some very smart, and well-informed, and funny, people. And trolls, but hell, trolls are everywhere. Many places seem to only have trolls.

Re:Oh look, more dice.com crap ...

[KGIII]

Or you can use this URL:

http://developers.slashdot.org...

How Much?

[MagickalMyst]

None, if you use Perl :) I write code to monitor hardware devices, interact with SQL, and output to HTML pages. Perl does it all!

That said, I think learning the basics of any language is important no matter what type of software you will be coding.

Programming languages are like tools; use the best tool to get the job done.

Assembly is a wonderful language if you are writing low level system software; not too useful for SQL databases. C++ is great for system interaction and fast apps - but I probably wouldn't use it for front end UI. Javascript is great for web pages but not for device drivers.

Visual Basic is good for.. um.. nothing.

Re:How Much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Assembly is a wonderful language if you are writing low level system software; not too useful for SQL databases.

I worked on a macro assembler IBM360 software product that used DB2 for its database. It wasn't that big of a deal.

This whole "best tool for the job" argument has merits (I do most of my stuff in Python because I fucking lazy and waayy over writing boiler plate code or using frameworks) but I have seen it horribly abused. Like this one dipshit who didn't like that the system was written all in VB so he insisted on the right tool for the right job and wrote the front end in Java, the parsing in Perl, and used one or two other languages that "were best for the job". It was a mess, buggy and crashed all the time. The folks who ran the system went back to the "wrong" version written in VB and had the modifications added to that code base. It was rock solid and fast enough for them.

I never saw the what the big deal was with Perl. It has shitty syntax and the regex turned me into a drunk.

It's all just syntax that eventually ends up in the same zeros and ones to the machine. Different languages were written to make a certain chore easier or because some programmer wanted to prove something.

Re:How Much?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Programming languages are like tools; use the best tool to get the job done.

Best is an often misused term. Best includes best for business, meaning sometimes you use algorithmically suboptimal tools and it turns out to be the best facilitator anyway.

Re:How Much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or if you use basic , it does it all depending on the variant you use.

Re:How Much?

[Anonymous Coward]

No VB is very useful, you will spend hours rewriting VB into a modern language

Re:How Much?

[Anonymous Coward]

DONT FEED THE TROLLS

Re:How Much?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're talking BS. You do not interact with SQL, it's the bloody language you use to interact with DBs! Furthermore, why are you even using SQL, they should be model objects you use. You're probably one of those script kids that constructs SQL statements as text strings...

Re:How Much?

[Anonymous Coward]

And Perl is only good because people made the mistake of using it in the first place.

Re:How Much?

[Anonymous Coward]

VB and C# are equivalents, they essentially support most of the exact same features. The people who say C# is fine, but VB is some nightmare just reveal that they know nothing about the languages, or they stopped with VB6 back in the 90s.

Re: How Much?

[Anonymous Coward]

ACs who write "VB" when they mean "VB.NET" are the ones who really don't know the languages in question.

Re:How Much?

[Anonymous Coward]

C++ is great for system interaction and fast apps - but I probably wouldn't use it for front end UI

What is that Qt thing then?

If you mean "front end web applications", then that is Javascript only domain (or one of its derivatives that compiles down to Javascript)

Visual Basic is good for.. um.. nothing./quote

Except around here. You need 4-5 years of Visual Basic experience with a CS degree to make "intuitive user interfaces". And no, I do not make this shit up.

Re:How Much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Visual Basic is good for.. um.. nothing.

Actually, despite the weird syntax, back in the day I think Visual Basic was actually pretty useful for whipping together a GUI heavy Windows application. I've never used it myself, but looking at some old screenshots and examples, it looks pretty terse and effective.

Re:How Much?

[nephilimsd]

In all fairness, I've worked for several large companies (started in telecommunications and now in education) and so far, all of them have used Microsoft Office as a general productivity suite for day-to-day business. I work in data analytics (mostly report writing, actually), but the number of times that a project is best completed using VBA in Excel, Access, PowerPoint or even Outlook makes understanding VB well enough to automate monthly or quarterly reports in a format that executives find comfortable to work with has kept me employed far more than the ability to write complex queries in SQL or full applications in C++.

Re:How Much?

[Anonymous Coward]

And you're probably one of those OO dweebs who think ORM's are the bee's knees.

A Similar Question

[raftpeople]

How much of a summary do you need to read to know you should skip that one?

Re:A Similar Question

[CanadianMacFan]

Or: How much of the title do you need to read in order to guess it's an article from dice?

Re:A Similar Question

[ArcadeMan]

Question: How much of the title do you need to read in order to guess it's an article from dice?

Answer: None at all. If you're on Slashdot, it's a given.

By a strange coincidence, "None at all" is exactly how much suspicion the ape descendant Arthur Dent had that one of his closest friends was not descended from an ape, but was in fact from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse. Arthur Dent's failure to suspect this reflects the care with which his friend blended himself into human society, after a fairly shaky start. When he first arrived 15 years ago, the minimal research he had done suggested to him that the name Ford Prefect would be nicely inconspicuous. He will enter our story in 30 seconds and say, "Hello, Arthur."

The ape descendant will greet him in return but, in deference to a million years of human evolution, he will not attempt to pick fleas off him. Earthmen are not proud of their ancestors and never invite them round to dinner.

Re:A Similar Question

[rubycodez]

Those three points would be steps in learning any language too; next week they can s/Python/Objective C/g then s/Python/Go/g .....

Re:A Similar Question

[__aaclcg7560]

If the title is obviously confusing and/or misleading, read the summary before commenting.

Re:A Similar Question

[Anonymous Coward]

How much of a summary do you need to read to know you should skip that one?

Nerval's Lobster writes:

Well, what is minimum usefulness required?

[Gestahl]

Tier 2 support might get by with being able to read and diagnose problems, them pass them on to dev. Junior programmers might need bare minimum of syntax and structure, the heavy lifting being taken care of by the architecture team: anything they can't handle goes to the senior developers. Architects and thought leaders may need to at least be familiar with every major library, and experts or even contributors to the ones critical to their systems in order to be useful in their roles. Improperly scoped questions are guaranteed to generate non-productive discussion as people are arguing from their own positions.

Re:Well, what is minimum usefulness required?

[Darinbob]

It's like shell programming. If you know how to use "&&" or "||" you can make use of that without knowing anything else. It's all incremental. Python is not used only for major software development, so you need to know nothing at all about "pip" or the extra modules to make use of it. Just like perl, you can be a highly experienced Perl user and never once look at the CPAN stuff.

Like any scripting language, they're initially designed to be helper languages that let you get the job done on some side projects. Only later do they morph into something bigger (and monstrous) for full blown applications, and maybe even develop a community group think vastly removed from the original style.

How much crap before Slashdot becomes useless?

[Anonymous Coward]

We've seen this same thing over and over with a different language. Does anyone care by now?

Next week:

How much Swift ... useful?

Re:How much crap before Slashdot becomes useless?

[dcollins117]

OK, you beat me to it. There have been a number of "What's the minimum amount of $LANGUAGE do you think I can get away in order to land my dream job? Preferably something that earns 6 figures...

Ok folks, I like answering questions but that's something I can't help you with :)

Re:How much crap before Slashdot becomes useless?

[Darinbob]

How much Slashdot do we need to know in order to be called a geek?

Re:How much crap before Slashdot becomes useless?

[XxtraLarGe]

How much Slashdot do we need to know in order to be called a geek?

I was at Hope College this week, where it all began. What does that get me? [bracing for rude replies]

Re:How much crap before Slashdot becomes useless?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea... I believe this officially counts for an OMGWTFBBQ!

Next up, meta-Slashdot... how many languages do you need to know to land a good job?

Re:How much crap before Slashdot becomes useless?

[narcc]

About 3 quarts.

Re:How much crap before Slashdot becomes useless?

[Thing 1]

How much Slashdot do we need to know in order to be called a geek?

Natalie Portman and grits.

Jon Katz.

You insensitive clod.

In soviet Russia, ...

The eponymous effect.

Libraries of Congress (per second).

Wesley Crusher.

Re:How much crap before Slashdot becomes useless?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oog no like Netcraft, they no confirm death of Stephen King...

Oog go back to waiting 20 minutes for Mac to transfer 17MB file!

Absolutely zero

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we can all agree that the linux kernel can be considered useful. Absolutely zero Python knowledge required or necessary. There are plenty of "general purpose" languages to choose from; there is no legitimate reason for Python (or C++, Perl, C#, Ruby, etc.) to ever be considered "needed".

Almost

[drinkypoo]

You have to know enough to know that it makes whitespace significant. That's useful, because it should lead you to choose another scripting language, one which is less retarded.

Re:Almost

[Marginal Coward]

It always amazes me that so many folks reject something entirely because they don't like one aspect of it. Good luck finding a wife...

Re:Almost

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

Have you actually written code in Python and found the whitespace handling to be an issue? When I first heard about whitespace being significant I didn't like it, but I've never had a problem in practice.

Re:Almost

[rubycodez]

My wife doesn't have a white space, she's asian.

Re:Almost

[brantondaveperson]

Many times. To write python, you cannot do without a python-aware editor. If you don't happen to have one to hand, then it's massively annoying.

It's just so un-necassary. It's such a weird design decision, when we've getting by with curly braces for so many decades in so many languages, that to just decide to do things differently to *everything* seems... Well.. Kind of pig-headed.

Fact is, python would be less irritating if they hadn't gone for the whitespace thing. Therefore it was a bad call.

Re:Almost

[narcc]

In the case of Python, it's entirely justified.

There are countless other reasons, obviously, but that alone is sufficient.

Re:Almost

[rwa2]

You have to know enough to know that it makes whitespace significant. That's useful, because it should lead you to choose another scripting language, one which is less retarded.

As a python guy, I lol'd the first time I had to maintain some ruby and found that the rubocop linter makes it more persnickety about whitespace than python is.

Re:Almost

[danthemanvsqz]

Set your editor to 4 hard spaces on tabs just like the PEP8 standard suggests. Problem solved.

Re:Almost

[Marginal Coward]

I heard a similar rationale regarding a baby and its bathwater. At first, the bathwater was blamed for the unfortunate zealous disposal of the baby. But when that explanation didn't fly, the purported ugliness of the baby was offered as justification. However, after hearing both explanations, the jury remained unconvinced.

Re:Almost

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that the docs still suck. And it's still Python.

Re:Almost

[Anonymous Coward]

Tables use white space to convey structure. Do you think they are retarded?

Paragraphs usually have a first line with extra white space. Is this retarded?

Centering titles implies using lots of white space. Is this retarded?

Operas have white spaces between arias. Supposedly this is also retarded, isn't it?

> You have to know enough to know that it makes whitespace significant. That's useful, because it should lead you to choose another scripting language, one which is less retarded.

You used white spaces in your post. Why? Are they significant or is your post retarded?

[Meta: Can we filter out registered posts -- obviously without being registered?]

Re:Almost

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing is a better giveaway of a terrible programmer than strong opinions for or against a particular language.

My hatred of JavaScript is one of my biggest weaknesses. But Python? What'd she ever do to you?

Re:Almost

[Anonymous Coward]

Cannot mod correctly until I know if "justified" was a conscious joke.

Re:Almost

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, being able to set tab-size isn't that python aware, but since python is a scripting language I wouldn't say that a scenario were it would be practical to be able to ssh into a box and edit a python script with whatever minimal terminal there is that isn't made for programming.
Configuring tab-size might be a side-track compared to solving the issue at hand, even if it doesn't require you to install a new editor at that time. (If you even have permissions to do that.)

For some problems python might be the best solution, but the whitespace handling is still a negative that ought to be fixed.
Essentially the language requires not only an editor with settable tab-size, but any kind of formatting issue will make the code unreadable.
A printout with lines broken at the wrong places will be completely worthless and while monospaced fonts is a very very good idea it is not something that the language should dictate.
An editor set to replacing tabs with spaces will utterly destroy your code.

Re:Almost

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right. Python is pretty darned ugly.

Re:Almost

[bunratty]

I've written Python for years and have never used any special editor. The one problem I've had is when commenting out several lines of Python code -- you need to add a # character to the beginning of each line. It's a minor inconvenience. But Python could use a good multiline comment mechanism. I had the same problem in Perl, which uses curly braces, so it isn't really an indentation issue at all.

Re:Almost

[Dogtanian]

Please excuse this off-topic queue-jumping reply to your comment, but there are times when someone makes a very insightful observation that really, really should have gone in a more prominent position.

Sneak preview; three virtually identical questions of the form "How Much [language x] Should You Know For an Entry-Level [language x] Job?" going to the Dice website and "submitted" by the same Slashdot employee in just over two weeks.

Bonus; OP linked above correctly predicted this week's story and even got the language right.

That's almost funny, except that it isn't. Admittedly, Slashdot has been "going down the tubes" almost since it launched, but this is particularly crap.

Re:Almost

[Zero__Kelvin]

To write python, you cannot do without a python-aware editor.

What kind of idiot writes code in an environment that isn't language / syntax aware in 2015?

" It's such a weird design decision, when we've getting by with curly braces for so many decades in so many languages, that to just decide to do things differently to *everything* seems .. Well.. Kind of pig-headed."

Seriously? You are arguing against change adamantly, and citing pig-headedness on the Python developers part? Now that is hilarious.

'Fact is, python would be less irritating if they hadn't gone for the whitespace thing. Therefore it was a bad call.

Since it isn't even remotely irritating to myself and (likely) hundreds of thousand of others it wasn't a bad call for us. If it was a "bad call" for you, I suggest you can chalk that up to your pig-headedness combined with your lack of understanding the important of using decent code development tools.

Re:Almost

[mvdw]

I've written Python for years and have never used any special editor. The one problem I've had is when commenting out several lines of Python code -- you need to add a # character to the beginning of each line. It's a minor inconvenience.

What about using the """ triple-quote format? That works for multi-line comments, but may be "special" in that it's interpreted by other tools.

Re: Almost

[danthemanvsqz]

How would it destroy your code? If you don't have access to the .vimrc or other config, then simply use the space bar instead of tab.

Re: Almost

[danthemanvsqz]

Use triple quotes to temporarily comment out code.

Re:Almost

[narcc]

Would you rather I complain about the compatibility problems between minor versions? It's abysmal performance? Or do I need to expound on the original point and poke fun at how anonymous functions are crippled because of the absurd whitespace rules, point out how they often hurt readability, explain how they lead to bugs that are literally invisible, or about how they make refactoring code difficult?

The whitespace rules are reason enough to avoid learning it, just as it's serious compatibility issues are reason enough to avoid using it in any professional context. Why bother with further explanation? It's far more economical to move on to any one of countless alternatives far more suitable for any given application.

Re:Almost

[Anonymous Coward]

Tables use white space to convey structure. Do you think they are retarded?

Paragraphs usually have a first line with extra white space. Is this retarded?

Centering titles implies using lots of white space. Is this retarded?

Operas have white spaces between arias. Supposedly this is also retarded, isn't it?

> You have to know enough to know that it makes whitespace significant. That's useful, because it should lead you to choose another scripting language, one which is less retarded.

You used white spaces in your post. Why? Are they significant or is your post retarded?

[Meta: Can we filter out registered posts -- obviously without being registered?]

So exactly how much whitespace is required for each of these, measured in what units? Does anything break if you are off by one?
The problem isn't SPACE, it's quantifying it.

Re:Almost

[xvan]

Esc
Ctrl + v
Down Arrow (Repeat N times)
Shift + I
Shift + 3 <- Depends on keyboard Layout
Esc
(wait 2 seconds)

Re:Almost

[ultranova]

Admittedly, Slashdot has been "going down the tubes" almost since it launched, but this is particularly crap.

13,000,000,000 BC. Spacetime comes to existence and expands rapidly, setting into motion the chain of events that'll eventually lead to the formation of Earth, rise of life and the existence of Slashdot, thus ruining it forever.

Re:Almost

[ArmoredDragon]

I actually think that's kind of genius. It makes everybody's code more legible. I'm not that much of a programmer, mostly dealing with interpreted scripting languages like TCL, Bash, and Powershell, and I can't tell you how many times I've hated reading somebody else's script because they didn't indent for shit, and they put their curly braces in such weird places that it was hard to tell what was encapsulated inside of what. And then they somehow expect somebody else to be able to debug it later.

Re:Almost

[Anonymous Coward]

Netcraft confirms it: Slashdot is dead.

Re:Almost

[Zontar The Mindless]

I've been reading Slashdot since it was published on stone tablets, and... OK, it sucked then, too.

Re: Almost

[warren.marco7781]

I believe that quality is called cognitive dissonance. Just because you don't understand the nature of something doesn't mean you should a knee jerk reaction to it.

Re: Almost

[warren.marco7781]

*should have had* - sorry. Also, I am not completely sure if "knee jerk" should be hyphenated.

Re:Almost

[MadKeithV]

I have written significant Python code used and maintained in a cross-platform environment by multiple people. I was absolutely fine with the whitespace requirement until that point, but tabs and spaces became mixed and line endings became confused and perfectly valid-looking Python suddenly stopped working correctly.

Now, those are all solvable problems, and we did actually solve them in various ways, but Python's the only language where the usually invisible difference between tabs and spaces can actually make your code do different things. Python requires a non-Python safety net to get you to write predictable code in a heterogeneous text editing environment. That's not a good thing, even if it can be mitigated.

Re:Almost

[Anonymous Coward]

Vim handles this with ease.

Ctrl-V <down-arrow > < down-arrow > I # <ESC>

Re:Almost

[locofungus]

Have you actually written code in Python and found the whitespace handling to be an issue?

I only use python out of necessity, never out of choice, so I'm probably not a representative voice but:

You cannot comment out an if statement so that the code that was conditional is always executed while debugging. You are forced to either comment out the if and re-indent the conditional code or add brackets and or true. Both lead to higher potential risks when undoing the change later.

Python requires indenting but does not require a consistent level or style of indenting. Every time you start a new indent it can be indented a different number of spaces and/or tabs provided only that it's more than the previous line. It is, however, EXTREMELY dangerous to try to reindent such files because the only requirement is that the indent matches a "valid" line above the current line. If there is a mixture of tabs and spaces in the file then this doesn't have to be the line that it visually matches up with.

Automatically reindenting a C++ program is likely to uncover places where the indenting was misleading. It will never[1] lead to a non compiling program being able to compile or a change in semantics. Automatically reindenting a python program is, at best, going to leave the code unchanged. It can render a non-syntatically correct program valid or change the meaning of a program.

[1] there are some obscure corner cases with line continuation characters that are sensitive to there being no or some whitespace at the start of the continuation line.

Re:Almost

[Dr_Barnowl]

Indeed. It's been shown by tracking eye movements, that while beginners laboriously pore over code to determine what it does, the eyes of the experienced coder mostly flick over the indent structure of the code, and only dip into the lines when they need to refer to detail.

This is why experienced coders feel so strongly about consistent indenting - not because they are all neat-freaks, but because it directly impacts their ability to comprehend the code. Bad indenting is like scratching the needle on a beautiful piece of music, or shouting random words, or *shudder* listening to sales people describe requirements.

Python forces you to indent consistently. If only Guido / PEP-8 hadn't chosen the wrong indent sequence as the preferred standard (4 spaces instead of a tab) ;-)

Re: Almost

[Anonymous Coward]

So the correct answer is Assembly, right?

Re: Almost

[Anonymous Coward]

Use a proper code editor maybe? In any decent editor you can easily distinguish tabs from other white space.

Re: Almost

[KGIII]

Real programming is done in actual binary with a small magnet to manual flip the bits into ones and zeros on the disk itself. If you do not or can not do that then you should be restricted to the markup languages.

Re: Almost

[KGIII]

It should have been hyphenated. However, we would have just joked about how you put the hyphen in the wrong spot and that it should be in between jerk and reaction.

Re:Almost

[KGIII]

How many of those are a programming language (or scripting language or non-compiled language if you prefer)?

Re:Almost

[brantondaveperson]

Of course indenting is important. But it should have remained an orthogonal issue to the choice of block delimiters. By not using curly braces, unlike everything else (ok, matlab is different, and lua is different etc etc... but curly braces are the majority), I have additional unnecessary cognitive load when running around the C->Python->Javascript->Go racetrack like I do at work.

I hate cognitive load. It makes me irritable.

If I only wrote code in python, or like a prior poster, had only experience of badly written shell scripts, I might not mind so much. But as it is, it drives me up the wall.

And since I'm on slashdot moaning about weird language choices, what's with Go's 'Capital letters means public' thing. Grrrrr.

Re:Almost

[Anonymous Coward]

If I put two or three spaces between my words, it does not break my sentence. If I put two or three spaces in front of my sentence, it does not break what I was trying to say. Anything else is retarded.

Re:Almost

[Your.Master]

Yes, I would rather you complain about those. They sound legitimate.

If I were making a language, I would strongly consider making whitespace work the way Python does (to enforce readable indenting standards), with the addition that mixing tabs and spaces is a syntax error, so you don't get those literally invisible bugs. I might even consider having both curly braces and meaningful whitespace: the level of indentation would act as a checksum on the correct number of open curly braces.

This is because bad indenting (aka bad use of whitespace) is also a common source of hard-to-find bugs. The famous "goto fail" bug is an example of a bug that is fairly common, and is actually resolved by meaningful whitespace. I imagine it was probably introduced from a merge conflict resolution, and then overlooked because it doesn't jump out at you unless you're looking for it. And also because the indentation in that file is a mess that only looks right if you set tabs to equal exactly four spaces, eliminating the one legitimate minor advantage of tabs over spaces. I mean, look at this: http://opensource.apple.com/so...

I'd also genuinely like to learn more about how anonymous functions are crippled by whitespace.

Re:Almost

[brantondaveperson]

Now that is hilarious.

I'm happy to have entertained you.

Of course I normally use a syntax-aware editor, but the fact is that you don't always have one to hand, and it seems that Python goes out of its way to make this a problem for you. If this makes me an idiot, then so be it.

Re:Almost

[Marginal Coward]

Please complain about as many things as possible. In my experience, people universally enjoy hearing complaints. :-)

But seriously, I literally have not had any of the problems you complain about. I don't remember the whitespace thing (which I happen to like) to have ever caused me a problem. If anything, it prevented problems compared to the common alternative.

Regarding compatibility among minor versions, Python has always been famously committed to a very high level of compatibility between minor versions, which I have always used interchangeably. (Think about it: you don't get and retain the status of being one of just a very few primary scripting languages without that.)

That said, you're right, though about "it's" [sic] slowness. So, what part of "scripting language" don't you understand...? Specifically, it really isn't possible to gain the advantages of dynamic typing without losing the advantage of speed. That's why those of us who use Python for part of our work use a compiled language for the other part of our work. (I use both C and C++ regularly.) You might as well complain that a screwdriver doesn't pound in nails very well. True enough, but a hammer really isn't that useful for turning screws, either...

Re:Almost

[ArmoredDragon]

what's with Go's 'Capital letters means public' thing. Grrrrr.

So you don't have to type the word public and can just Go straight to coding the function.

Re:Almost

[narcc]

I'd also genuinely like to learn more about how anonymous functions are crippled by whitespace.

I'll let Guido answer that.

Of course, he sees nothing wrong with the absurd constraints imposed on lambdas by his ridiculous white space rules:

In my mind, the inability of lambda to contain a print statement or a while-loop etc. is only a minor flaw;

Re:Almost

[narcc]

So, what part of "scripting language" don't you understand...?

Nothing, or everything, depending on who you ask. There's no real definition. Today, anything with dynamic typing gets called a "scripting language". Years ago, it just meant any language used in some host environment (a word processor, web browser, game, etc.) In a few years, I'm sure it'll be something different. Some people already use it as a pejorative for languages they don't personally like.

, Python has always been famously committed to a very high level of compatibility between minor versions,

A google search will confirm a host of issues with compatibility between 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, and 2.6. That last one is interesting, as it was hailed as a version that was capable of running "most" python 2 code.

You'll also find popular projects that require a specific version of python as newer versions are incompatible. It's not uncommon to find multiple versions of python on a single system to address this. I can pass along specific examples if you'd like.

It's more than 20 years old at this point. You'd think that we'd see some stability.

Re:Almost

[Zero__Kelvin]

"Of course I normally use a syntax-aware editor, but the fact is that you don't always have one to hand,"

It is impossible for me to take you seriously after a comment like that. If you can't figure out a way to guarantee that you have the editor of your choice at your disposal you are hopeless. Seriously.

Re:Almost

[brantondaveperson]

Look - I know this is the internet and everything - and being intolerably rude is apparently the norm. But you should really consider the way in which you speak to people about whom you know nothing but a few sentences written in an online form.

Seriously.

It's great that you have control over every computer that you ever do work on - including installing whatever your editor-of-choice is - but not everyone has that luxury. The fact remains that Python's choice of whitespace instead of delimiting characters causes a problem for me. That this fact makes it impossible for you to take me seriously is ok - you just don't need to be a dick about it.

No one uses shitty Python

[Anonymous Coward]

Real devs use PERL for serious application that needs to scale. Python is a toy for dweebs coming from Excel macros and kids.

COBOL

[Anonymous Coward]

COBOL WAS LIKE THAT UP TO THE 1977 REVISION. FORTUNATELY I LEARNED COBOL-80.

Blah, blah, blah, COBOL is yelling.

The Article Asks, "Is it enough?"

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is no.

Guido van Rossum himself isn't qualified for an entry-level Python position.

That's why we need more H1-Bs!

Re:The Article Asks, "Is it enough?"

[phsdv]

Probably Guido van Rossum himself came to the USA on a H1-B visa, before he got his green card.

Re:The Article Asks, "Is it enough?"

[Anonymous Coward]

That may or may not be factually correct, but irrelevant.

van Rossum easily qualifies for an O-1 visa.

Bare minimum

[bobdehnhardt]

I'd say the Parrot Sketch, Argument Clinic, and Silly Walks. Maybe add in Bruces and Spanish Inquisition, although no one expects that last one.

Um, what? No, I didn't read the article before responding. Why do you ask?

Re:Bare minimum

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd go with parrot sketch, hitlers excursion, and monty pythons best sketch ever.

Re:Bare minimum

[Yaztromo]

I'd say the Parrot Sketch, Argument Clinic, and Silly Walks. Maybe add in Bruces and Spanish Inquisition, although no one expects that last one.

If you haven't spent an afternoon saying "Ni!" to your colleagues, you may turn in your geek/nerd card on your way out.

By way of penance, you must return here with a shrubbery, or else you will never pass through this wood alive. One that looks nice. And not too expensive.

Now go!

Re:Bare minimum

[Anonymous Coward]

And the Cheese Shop sketch.

Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

As with any programming language,

a + b = c

Once you understand that, then the rest simple (not easy), and entirely dependent on your hard work.

Re:Simple

[Darinbob]

Start with 0s and 1s, and everything else derives from that. (except for functional languages, where you start with S and K)

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't indent properly, error!

The answer is

[fluffernutter]

42

Silly question

[MikeRT]

The answer is that you need to know enough that you can hit the ground walking, if not running, unless you are entry level.

All of it

[Anonymous Coward]

It is vital that all humans know everything there is to know about python, or they are simply useless.

(oh, and also, for a python to be useful it must have 60 years experience and not be over the age of 22)

a basic working Python currency?

[tchdab1]

I'd say "not dead yet", "the lumberjack song", "spam", "Torremolinos!", and a couple movies.

Scope of question

[lq_x_pl]

It is difficult to identify how much of [anything] one needs to know without knowing what the [job] responsibilities are.
I use Python for day-to-day automation of things I'd rather not do by hand. I'm not master, and most of what I write looks like c++ (not very pythonesque) - so someone who is exceptionally proficient with Python would cringe at what I produce.
However, what Python I do know allows me to be more productive throughout my day.
Just spend time with the language trying to do things that [job] requires, and you will discover how much Python you need to know to do [job].

Re:Scope of question

[msobkow]

I do my automation with ksh/bash scripts. They work on pretty much any *nix platform without requiring an additional language stack be installed.

Re:Scope of question

[shutdown -p now]

Pretty much all mainstream Linux distros (which, let's be honest, is 90+% of *nix platform these days) have Python out of the box. On others, installing it is a single command along the lines of "pkg add python" away. It sounds like an excuse.

Re:Scope of question

[msobkow]

The only dependency a software package should have is on the things it actually needs and uses. Adding a dependency just for the sake of scripting given the number of tools out there that can achieve the task is foolish.

See "systemd"...

Re:Scope of question

[Anonymous Coward]

The number of times I've seen shell scripts fail upon migration to a different *nix platform is far and away larger than the number of times I've had a difficult time getting python installed.

Nevermind the fact that python works on far more than just *nix systems.

So I guess some people like more flexibility and portability than you do.

Re:Scope of question

[Anonymous Coward]

someone asks a question about some language and some asshat always has to one-up them with something. "I have a question about Java" "You should be using C" "I have a question about C" "You should be using assembly" "I have a question about python" "You should be using bash" Geek dick-measuring contest confirmed!

Re:Scope of question

[lq_x_pl]

Oh sure. Bash is plenty useful for many tasks. However, if my boss asks me to harvest a 50k line xml doc for a certain kind of information, I can get there a lot faster with Python. That may just be due to a deficiency in my ability to regex - however, the number of modules I can import into Python extend my usefulness on many of the random tasks I get assigned sometimes. :-)

Re:Scope of question

[umghhh]

Stripping things to the absolute core has some advantages. Yet because shells are different and the one you consider basic, is not always available (due to corporate policy or some other force of nature), this makes this absolute minimum a set of absolute minimums. If so you can just say - chose the tool available and best fitting your approach to the problem
Besides simplification is good but you should not simplify beyond certain point. I'd say python belongs to the set of common tools as are grep, awk, sed, all shells and other tools. I am divided myself on whether that is good or bad but I accept it as it is.

Re:Scope of question

[Anonymous Coward]

GP was specifically referring to automation, but grepping things out of XML with Python
is extraction of data, not automation of commands.

It's like if someone came along and said "Python is useful for many tasks, but if I was
writing a multithreaded GUI application I'd use C++"; just irrelevant.

For the automation task, the shell has the advantage that you don't really have to learn it,
because you already knew some subset of it to begin with (to even use the computer).
I only wish the standard shell on Unixes wasn't Bourne-derived: I feel that Bourne's syntax
being as ugly as it is gives people a bad impression of the shell concept in general, since
for most people Bourne and shell are always synonymous.

Re:Scope of question

[shutdown -p now]

OP said that he uses Python for "day-to-day automation of things". What software package are we talking about?

I don't know ...

[PPH]

... any of the code. But I'm quite good with the whitespace.

really helpful

[binarstu]

From TFA:

Python is a general-purpose language, which means it isn’t used for just one purpose such as Web development.

Oh, so that is what "general-purpose" means! I'm still not sure I understand, though. Can you give me some examples?

For example, if you’re hired to write apps that interact with operating systems and monitor devices, you might not need to know how to use the Python modules for scientific and numerical programming. In a similar fashion, if you’re hired to write Python code that interacts with a MySQL database, then you won’t need to master how it works with CouchDB.

Got it. So with Python, I don't need to spend time learning things that I don't need to know. Python does sound like quite a useful language!

In all seriousness, the article doesn't even have its facts straight. Consider:

Any Python newbie needs to know which types are immutable, which means an object of that type can’t be changed (answer: tuples and strings).

No, that's not the correct answer. Numeric types are also immutable, and that includes integers, floats, complex numbers, and Booleans. Frozen sets are immutable. (To be fair, frozen sets are a relatively obscure type unlikely to be used by beginners.) There are probably others I'm not thinking of off the top of my head.

come on dice... really?

[evilrip]

this has to be some sort of bad joke, nobody is laughing at the horrendous quality of articles and the repeat nature of them.. christ.

Quite a lot

[Anonymous Coward]

At the very least, you should be able to quote a sentence from every scene Holy Grail, and you should also be familiar with a significant part of the Life of Brian. You may skip the Meaning of Life.

A lot don't know enough to be useful

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, a lot do know enough to be dangerous which is a much lower bar to clear.

Aptitude instead of existing knowledge

[Rigel47]

Unless you're hiring someone for a specific development role (in which case you know exactly what you need) there's really no right answer to this question. But evaluating someone's ability to learn and do on their own is paramount in my experience. I'm a sysadmin and don't code much but I have written my own python scripts that interact with databases including scripts with classes and modules as well as multi-threaded scripts. It was what was necessary to fix the problem at hand. Just don't ask me to sit down and write it during the interview, I will likely need a day or two to buff the rust off my knowledge.

I tried Python, I found it too constricting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that's all I had. Remember to tip your waiter.

Did I call it or did I call it?

[Verloc]

Comment: Ahh Dice (Score 4, Funny)
by Verloc on Thursday June 04, 2015 @10:08PM (#49844935) Attached to: How Much JavaScript Do You Need To Know For an Entry-Level Job?

Last week it was "How much C++ do you need to know for an entry level job"

next week it'll be "How much Python do you need for an entry level job"

Must be nice crowd sourcing your job requirements from Slashdot.
---

It was even Python. Amazing. I predict next week: Ruby.

Re:Did I call it or did I call it?

[Dogtanian]

Er.... yeah. Indeed you did. I missed those, but this is utterly, utterly blatant now that it's been pointed out; this should have been posted higher- it's one of the few cases I'd forgive posting as an offtopic "reply" to an early comment in order to increase its prominence.

Here are the stories in question:-

How Much C++ Should You Know For an Entry-Level C++ Job? (May 27 2015)

How Much JavaScript Do You Need To Know For an Entry-Level Job? (4 June 2015)

Note the a gap of eight days between the stories in both cases. Note that the three stories were submitted respectively by Nerval's Lobster, Nerval's Lobster and, er... Nerval's Lobster. Who happens to work for Slashdot.

Not that I'm suggesting that the fact Slashdot is now owned by the IT and engineering careers website Dice has anything to do with it being used to push out formulaic and self-serving "submissions" like this. *cough*

Seriously, this makes even the old Slashdot "whoops, a stupid editor 'accidentally' posted the same good-for-attracting-pageviews-and-discussion story twice just as it fell off the front page" cynicism look good.

Re:Did I call it or did I call it?

[Dogtanian]

Addendum; Just checked- they're all links to Dice stories, not even cherry-picked third-party ones. Enough said.

Re:Did I call it or did I call it?

[sootman]

Next week, when this story appears on Slashdice, let's all just link to this post.

Bruces.

[jpellino]

And Cheese Shop.

I think you would need to know the Holy Grail...

[Fallen Kell]

I mean seriously, you need to at least know the Holy Grail to say that you know Python...

None

[Anonymous Coward]

Python is for morons who can't really write code.

Easy!

[Anonymous Coward]

You know you can skip everything when you get to the phrase "a new Dice piece."

that's right, nice man, I AM dangerous

[mix_left_and_right]

brushes AC's shoulders....

Re:that's right, nice man, I AM dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

Look everyone! This is a great example of how GAY python coders are. They want to brush up against your shoulders *even if* they don't know what sex your are.

Competition

[Livius]

It does not take much of any skill to be useful. There's always a certain amount of entry-level work that has value.

It takes god-like powers, however, to be competitive in today's job market, which I suspect might be the question actually intended.

I love Python!

[danthemanvsqz]

I know C, C++, C#, Java, Javascript and Python. By far Python is my favorite language. Reading the comments I see many haters here bitching about the tabs. That is a very weak argument. Python's beauty comes in the elegant and readable code. Also there are three programming styles to solve any problem, OOP, procedural and functional. This allows a programmer to be creative and have a ton of fun programming. Those other verbose languages are tedious and boring, everyone's code looks the same because the IDE writes most of it for you.

Re:I love Python!

[TeknoHog]

If you love Python, like I do, consider having an affair with Julia. http://iki.fi/teknohog/rants/p...

Re:I love Python!

[narcc]

Python's beauty comes in the elegant and readable code.

A lot of really stupid people think all python code is easy to read because of it's absurd white space rules. I'm here to tell you that most of the python code I've encountered is worse than obfuscated perl. Even the best python code I've encountered is painful to read -- all due to its absurd whitespace rules. The worst is when the indentation level drops by more than one level.

Also there are three programming styles to solve any problem, OOP, procedural and functional.

That's not a point I'd make. Here, the oft-maligned javascript has python beat hands-down. As an added bit of fun, the absurd white space rules are the one and only reason that anonymous functions in python are completely crippled!

Of course, this could all change next week when they release another version of python that's incompatible with previous versions. Call me in another 20 years when there's something at least approaching stability.

Re:I love Python!

[danthemanvsqz]

You've just indicted yourself as having a poor ability to read code. BTW Javascipts anonymous functions are used because of their dysfunctional scoping rules not because they are someway better than Pythons. Python simply doesn't need to use so many Lambdas.

Data mining

[msobkow]

That's what happens when a website's owner decides to use it for data mining instead of publishing actual articles anyone cares about.

I've managed to get by

[Anonymous Coward]

I've managed to get by just knowing how to spell phithon.

Obligatory xkcd

[rwa2]

C'mon people, I waited all day and I still have to post this for you?

https://xkcd.com/353/
which all of course ends in:
https://xkcd.com/521/ (mouseover text)

TIL

[bobmajdakjr]

Today I learned you need to know the primitives and syntax, but only the modules you actually plan to use. I've been doing programming wrong all this time.

The language isn't important

[Chalnoth]

It's not the language nearly as much as it's more general software development skills such as algorithms, data structures, algorithmic complexity, and design patterns. It's really easy to transition between languages and shore up your own holes in knowledge by keeping links to reference resources (or books).

The general practice of knowing how to translate an idea into a workable piece of code is far, far more important. The individual language is just the medium through which you're working. Different languages have somewhat different toolboxes (with a lot of overlap), but overall the general concepts are the same. Focus on the software design fundamentals. You can pick up a new computer language within a few weeks whenever you need to.

Re:The language isn't important

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the language nearly as much as it's more general software development skills such as algorithms, data structures, algorithmic complexity, and design patterns. It's really easy to transition between languages and shore up your own holes in knowledge by keeping links to reference resources (or books).

The general practice of knowing how to translate an idea into a workable piece of code is far, far more important. The individual language is just the medium through which you're working. Different languages have somewhat different toolboxes (with a lot of overlap), but overall the general concepts are the same. Focus on the software design fundamentals. You can pick up a new computer language within a few weeks whenever you need to.

People keep saying that, and I keep fixing their shit.

Common Sense

[Art3x]

I didn't read the article, but the summary makes it sound like it would have been a waste of time anyway:

How Much Python Do You Need To Know To Be Useful?
...
Cogswell suggests there are three basic levels to learning Python: Learn the core language itself, such as the syntax and basic types (and the difference between Python 2 and Python 3); learn the commonly used modules, and familiarize yourself with other modules; learn the bigger picture of software development with Python, such as including Python in a build process, using the pip package manager, and so on.

Isn't that the case with any language? Dice could have attracted even more people with this:

How Much of a Programming Language Do You Need To Know To Be Useful?
...
Cogswell suggests there are three basic levels to learning your next programming language: Learn the core language itself, such as the syntax and basic types (and the difference between the current and last major versions); learn the commonly used modules, and familiarize yourself with other modules; learn the bigger picture of software development with the language, such as including it in a build process, using the package manager, and so on.

Re: "short-sided"

[Anonymous Coward]

Was that a typo, or were you just being stupid?

Useful?

[Culture20]

I can't think of much of a practical use for most of python, but "always look on the bright side of life" was a song with a wise undertone.

greasemonkey/tampermonkey script?

[Fnord666]

Does anyone have a greasemonkey/tampermonkey script that hides dice spam authored by this twat?

Re:greasemonkey/tampermonkey script?

[Anonymous Coward]

// ==UserScript==
// @name noval
// @namespace slashdot.org
// @description blocks nerval's lobster's posts
// @include http://slashdot.org/*
// @include https://slashdot.org/*
// @version 1
// @grant none
// ==/UserScript==

var articles = document.getElementsByTagName('article');

for (i=0; i<articles.length; i++)
{
    var article = articles[i].innerHTML;
    var trigger = '<a href="/~Nerval\'s+Lobster">';
    if (article.indexOf(trigger) != -1)
        articles[i].style.display = 'none';
}

You can change the trigger to whatever you want, any text/HTML in the submission header or body. I assume a tampermonkey script would be the same/similar but I don't currently have a Blink-based browser installed.

knuth?

[Anonymous Coward]

Internalizing data structures and algorithms beats learning a language.

We can make it

[Anonymous Coward]

The post on PHP has 208 comments right now. Common Python, you can do it !

That depends

[Joolz50]

Define useful

Python is for sissy coders

[Anonymous Coward]

In order to be a goat-sucking-muther-fuking-asshole code terrorist? Any amount is the answer. For all others?, none would be the answer. none.

Cogswell... is that a good jewish name?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just curious dice.

All you need is ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... to watch the Python movie "And now for something completely different" and you're pretty much covered.

Wrong Question

[3LP]

I would turn the question around. Lots of people end up in programming environments, but not all of them are temperamentally suited to be a software engineer. So, say you are interviewing someone and they have 'Python experience'. Ask how long they have been exposed to Python. One day? Then they ought to be able to talk for 10 minutes about the syntax. Six months? They ought to be familiar with the core modules. Someone of any level of experience ought to be interested in the development of the language they are using. People can be exposed to a language for a long time without absorbing the lessons it has to teach.

None

[Skapare]

None ... still compatible with Python3.

It suggests there is no such thing...

[Sqreater]

...as knowing a language, just knowing a particular task of programming. You can be very knowledgeable and experienced in a language and still not be qualified for the job. And it is all an indication of the coming complexity collapse, not just in software, but in all things.

Re:I think you would need to know the Holy Grail..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Python is absolutely crucial for knowing how not to be seen, and for self-defense against a person armed with fresh fruit. Getting hit on the head lessons are also useful.

It's not like it was Forth

[Mister Null]

It's not like it was Forth or something else that takes a mindset change.

Nope

[gladius17]

Give it up, chump.

Error

[gladius17]

Unable to import symbol hotchick: insufficient funds

Unable to import symbol hotchick: private member violation

Unable to import symbol hotchick: class boundary exceeded

Unable to import symbol hotchick: out of memory

Unable to import symbol hotchick: no operating system

Unable to import symbol hotchick: indentation error

Unable to import symbol hotchick: general failure

Unable to spawn child process: failure