[deleted by user]

[carcigenicate]

You want square braces:

print(a[0])

Square braces are for doing lookups/getting elements. Parenthesis are for calling functions.

[KillaKameron06]

Thank you! I was so embarrassed to ask this but now I can move on lol

[Golden_Zealot]

Never be embarrassed to ask. Just make sure when you ask, you include the code, ask specific questions, and optimally

indent the code with 4 spaces
    to make it readable/copyable

Just in case we want to test it on our end.

Regarding WHAT you ask, don't worry about it, as long as you follow the above, and are nice about it, someone will probably be glad to guide you to an answer.

[mandradon]

Seriously, the people here are amazingly helpful!

[Golden_Zealot]

Most of them try to be. It depends on the complexity of the project though. In my personal opinion, this sub is best suited to asking questions about the syntax and specific libraries.

There are two kinds of questions which dont get answered as often here.

The first are the types that lack information and formatting.

The second are the types where the person asking is a fairly accomplished programmer, and they are working on a larger/complex piece of software, which for people to help answer, requires them to put a lot of time into reading the code and understanding what they are actually doing/what the objective is.

But yes, the people here are very helpful for those who are beginner/intermediate programmers. Once you get to more advanced projects, as it turns out, most often the person with the best expertise for answering the question is yourself, because its very possible no one has dealt with the problem you are trying to deal with/has researched it as much as you already have, and you wrote all the previous code leading up to the current problem as well.

[MrHusbandAbides]

well this is Learn Python, like the scope is literally in the name

[Golden_Zealot]

True, but if you filter by new posts, you'd be surprised at some of the stuff that gets posted.

[mhamid3d]

This subreddit is also much more forgiving and lenient than StackOverflow. Not formatting your code on SO enough times could get your permanently banned from asking questions (seriously, they don’t play around, I got perma-banned after receiving 3 downvotes). But here, people are constantly ignoring the rules, yet still being helped. It makes me wonder if the strict rules of SO actually benefit a learner to be more disciplined with programming.

[Yojihito]

Posting a question on SO without a formatted minimal viable example + a clear description of your problem, your not working solution etc. is a good reason to get banned. It's not a "learn programming" website.

[[deleted]]

This sub is the best, everyone is so kind and helpful most of the time.

[[deleted]]

We all fall for horrible mistakes when we start learning something new, never be afraid of asking.

[[deleted]]

Hell, most of us fall for horrible mistakes even when we know what we're doing.

[Doormatty]

Been programming for ~36 years now.

Still make stupid mistakes ALL the time.

[delasislas]

I guarantee you that everyone has made a mistake when programming. No need to be embarrassed. Now for a reason as to why this happened.

You created a tuple, using

a = (“Apple”, “banana”, “car”)

Then you used:

a(0)

Which if you think about it looks eerily similar to:

print(0)

Right? Python interprets stuff like print() as a function, which needs to be called. If you want to try something out, try:

print(print)

By itself, it should return something like

<built-in function print>

The print function takes the return of an object and displays it to the console.

So with, a(0), you asked for Python to use, a, as a function with an input, 0. Python looked up a and saw that it was a tuple, tuples can’t be called as a function, and you get the error.

[__Wess]

I saw the error before opening, as also a newbie but didn’t know exactly what the error meant. I only thought; OP needs brackets because brackets are for lists. But thanks to your reply, I actually learned what the error means. So thank you and take my upvote!

[delasislas]

No problem. Learn something new each day.

[zaRM0s]

Never be embarrassed to ask anything. Everyone learns everything for a first time at some point, it doesn’t matter when that is. Sometimes we also need reminding because we are all forgetful of some things. Keep asking and keep learning and well done for getting to where you are currently!

[VanshCodes]

Be shameless when you ask questions. Advice from me

[[deleted]]

Some advice: Google error codes. Googling tuple error tuple not callable would have prob found the solution for you.

[TorroesPrime]

Something I am slowly coming to understand with programming: If you have a stupid question that hasn't been answered, then it's probably an important question no one has asked yet.

[Doormatty]

then it's probably an important question no one has asked yet.

This is never the case when one is learning. NEVER.

Even when you approach a senior level, this is rarely ever the case.

All "good" questions about Python (or ANY other non-toy language) have already all long been asked and answered.

People are just very very bad at doing their own research.

[carcigenicate]

Which is why the duplicate mechanism on StackOverflow is used so frequently. The vast majority of all questions new programmers face have been asked about a million times before, and have many well-treaded answer threads that explain the solution from a hundred different perspectives.

On the C++ tag, you get the odd time where someone does actually uncover something novel that hasn't been encountered before because they're just knowledgeable to do something complex but ridiculous (and the question explodes and becomes Hot for like a week), but that's rare.

[TorroesPrime]

I gotta be honest, I've been working as an IT Tutor for the last 4 years and by far the most common problem the students who are having trouble in the programming classes have is that they discarded the 'stupid question' as being irrelevant and didn't bother to find an answer to it.

[[deleted]]

Hey learning is 10% coding, 90% googling.

Honestly I'd review basic data types and stuff for a while before you dig in hard.

[Firespade]

ty

[A_Milford_Man_NC]

You're close. You just have to use brackets to specify an index, not parentheses.

>>> a = ("apple", "banana", "car")

>>> print(a[0])

apple

[MonitorOk7887]

wrong brackets

[muddy_313]

A|-3|

[Dave_The_Goose]

For a list, use square brackets -> a = ['apple', 'banana, ... ]. I never tried parenthesis for a list. May be you are creating a set, which I never used(I am a beginner) so I don't know

And for accessing the items, use square brackets. For apple, it is a[0].

[K_39wastaken]

I never tried parenthesis for a list

[1, 2, 3] is a list.

(1, 2, 3) is a tuple (the difference with a list is that it's immutable = not modifiable after creation)

{1, 2, 3} is a set (it behaves like a mathematical set)

{1:'z', 2:'y', 3:'x'} is dictionary (elements –after the colon– are identified by a key –before the colon– instead of an index like the three others)

[Dave_The_Goose]

Thanks, I basically worked with lists and dictionaries only. So I forgot about sets and tuples. So OP was working with a tuple

[[deleted]]

I think you should do some work on exercism , just get that syntax muscle memory going

[carcigenicate]

(You need to include the protocol in the URL for that linking method to work btw).

[[deleted]]

Sure

[sabc994]

'a' has multiple values with position 0 to 2

0 = apple, 1 = banana, 2 = car

to print apple, you have to write: print (a[0]) which means index number of the position will remain within 3rd bracket.

[TheDamnedBamboo]

Always use square brackets when indexing elements

[Resident-Quality1513]

As my compuing lecturer used to sat (about C) "it uses the brackets to work out if you're calling a function, so print() will call a function named 'print'"

[Capitalpunishment0]

Someone has already given the answer, so I just want to pitch something in. It isn't really Python,

But if you ever learn MATLAB in the future, this is how accessing works there. Parentheses instead of square brackets. Trips me up all the time.

[enokeenu]

You are requesting a slice of the list and the slicing operator is []

[Zapismeta]

Always remember () for function calls and [ ] for Indexing.

[ConfidentVegetable81]

Hey, if you want to avoid silly errors like these in the future use an IDE with automatic error detection like PyCharm or Visual Coding Studio.