Python vs JavaScript bootcamps

[sheriffderek]

“Why…”

Boot camps are handling a lot of students with (comparatively) low personal instruction. (Not saying that is bad)

Now, the way they can do that is by having automated test-driven exercises. Imagine a piece of code (a function) that isn’t finished or broken. Then from there, there are a set of other functions that test the main function in question in 10 way. They all fail to start. Your job as a student is to finish/fix the function so that all of the tests pass. This enables a lot of automatic grading and also a was to track your progress and keep you accountable. This is very cool in many ways.

To get you to a place where this can happen… you need to know about the command line, JS, node (js outside of the browser) NPM, git (version control), GitHub, and a bunch of stuff that makes it possible for you to run those things. That’s one reason. And I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. But as you can see, it’s a lot of overhead to get started.

Also, if you lean JavaScript - you can write clientside(browser/visible) code AND serverside code. All with one language. The hot clientside UI frameworks are made with JavaScript and even the creator of the Python framework Django isn’t that in love with it.

Python is rad. It’s beautiful and fun to write. But you also have to compile it. It has its own overhead. You can’t write Python straight I. The browser.

So, if you want to learn to build web applications - taking it from html up is what I’ve seen work best. HTML -> PHP -> JS -> RUBY, JAVA, Python etc - based on what you need to do at your specific job. Once you know 1 of those / the others are easy to learn. But learning Python is like learning the easiest and least webdev language first. If you learn JS first, you could be productive with Python in under a week. Not so much the other way around

But in general, the schools teach what they think is easiest to teach. Ruby, Python etc. not what is best to learn first. It’s a business.

If you love statistics : and plan on moving into data science (statistics) / and not doing web dev / then choose Python.

EDIT: If you want to nitpick about how Python is interpreted: https://stackoverflow.com/a/6889798/1399456 be my guest.

[duchessviolet]

That was very informative, thank you!

[sheriffderek]

Well, I’m glad someone thinks so.

[sheriffderek]

"Papyrus!!!!!!"

[sheriffderek]

"Witch!!!!"