Simon Willison's Weblog: bruce-eckel

The departure of the hyper-enthusiasts

2005-12-18T21:25:27+00:00

The departure of the hyper-enthusiasts

Bruce Eckel on Java, Ruby, Python, Rails and more.

Tags: bruce-eckel

Innapropriate Abstractions

2003-12-17T02:09:29+00:00

Innapropriate Abstractions

Anders Hejlsberg + Bill Venners + Bruce Eckel = fascinating conversation

Tags: bruce-eckel

Python Advocacy from Bruce Eckel

2003-07-22T16:23:08+00:00

Bruce Eckel is turning in to the world's number one Python advocate. He explains his views on Python on his Weblog in Python Answers, elaborates further on the Python productivity boost in the fourth part of his Artima.com conversation, and discusses Python (amongst other topics) in an interview on the Borland Developer Network. In the latter, he has this to say about Python in education:

For me, I find it's more powerful to understand concepts than particular languages. Of course, you do have to understand languages in order to have implementations, but if I were designing a computer curriculum, I would teach Python first so that people could easily acquire depth in concepts, and then much later introduce languages like Java, C++ and C#, after they had reached the point of not getting confused by details. I think students could acquire the important skills much more quickly that way, and it would make a better use of their time. I'm not alone in this idea; there are more than a few college professors who feel the same way.

I'd love to see Python taught at Bath, where I am convinced that the hassle involved in writing and executing simple Java programs is putting many students off developing their programming skills.

The Ideal Programmer on Bruce's weblog is also worth a read; it touches upon the idea that 5% of programmers are 20 times productive than the rest, and asks how disinterested programmers can be encouraged to write better code.

Tags: python, bruce-eckel

Bruce Eckel on Python as a teaching language

2003-06-24T17:44:57+00:00

From the latest Artima interview:

One of the things I find that's remarkable about Python is that it has a very even learning curve. Maybe it's not even a curve, It's kind of a straight line. Learning Python has a zen-like quality, because Python doesn't try to make the world something else. The designers of Java wanted to make the entire world look like a Java virtual machine and the Java libraries. In addition, Java's designers decided that the C++ approach of allowing functions and global variables in addition to classes is bad. So everything in Java has to be declared in a class. For that reason, Utah Valley State College stopped using Java as an introductory language. They actually teach C++ as a first language, because they found it a lot easier.

Python would make an even better first language to teach programming. It's such a gentle learning curve. You can start with scripts, and of course some people dismiss Python as a scripting language, because you can script with it. You start teaching scripts. You can teach functions. Then later you can add classes. Then you can go onto things like metaclasses. Python has many more of these powerful constructs that you can learn when you're ready. And I think that's very impressive, because it doesn't say you should only be an object-oriented programmer.

Tags: python, bruce-eckel

Strong Typing vs Strong Testing

2003-05-04T20:32:56+00:00

In Strong Typing vs. Strong Testing, Bruce Eckel reconsiders the old idea that languages without strong typing can't be relied on to create large programs:

This became a puzzle to me: if strong static type checking is so important, why are people able to build big, complex Python programs (with much shorter time and effort than the strong static counterparts) without the disaster that I was so sure would ensue?

His conclusion is that type checking by the compiler does not garauntee the correctness of a program in the first place; it's just another test. Comprehensive unit testing can more than compensate for the lack of type checking in languages such as Python, especially since the huge productivity bonus provided by Python allows more tests to be written starting at an earlier stage in development.

Incidentally, Bruce recently added an RSS feed.

Tags: dynamic-languages, python, static-typing, bruce-eckel