Fall in love programming again...

I have been biased towards C++ ever since I learned it in school. But even after years of using it, I still don't find myself writing C++ programs effortlessly. I tried other languages like C, Java and Visual Basic but found none appealing enough.

In last few months I read a lot about Python. But, I wasn't in any mood to learn a “scripting language”. I am embarrassed to admit that I thought scripting languages like Perl/Python were for kids not real programmers. Also, I hated scripting ever since my undergrad Unix course where I had to write ugly looking, error prone shell scripts.

I started learning Python just to try a book I downloaded - “A Byte of Python” by Swaroop. After reading a few chapters, I was quite impressed. Python worked for me perfectly. Unlike most people, I loved the concept of whitespaces for code blocks. In my belief, It's the perfect way to force people to indent their code.

Also, I am mostly able to write error free Python code in the first go. I don't know whether it's common but I almost always encounter errors on first compile/run in my C++ programs.

Now, after finishing the book, I love Python so much that I have decided to write all new programs in Python. Currently, I am writing a Matrix class to allow matrix manipulation like Matlab. After this, I'll start wxWindows (a GUI Toolkit) and Python Imaging Library.

I must say, If you love (or used to love) programming, give Python a try. It'll remind you of the reason you loved programming originally.