The Logical Effect

It has been almost three years I am using JavaScript. In those years, I’ve learned many things about programming, people, and communities. One thing I noticed that some famous JavaScript/Node.js libraries are adapted from the Ruby world. Almost every other language has many Ruby inspired libraries. It is like Sinatra’s law.

Innovation exists in every language, not specific to Ruby. But I was more fascinated by authors of CoffeeScipt, Backbone.js and Ember.js. I decided to learn Ruby.

I started reading Ruby docs and online references, subscribed to Ruby news, started searching feature explanations on StackOverflow. Meanwhile I stumbled upon various comparison questions on Ruby and Python. I never used Python before. I casually fired up Python Interactive Shell and started playing with that!

Python

From that very day, every thing was full of Python. Many HN posts were about Python. People in opposite cubical were discussing about Python script.

Then a problem popped out — I started hearing about ‘logical’ and ‘pythonic’ words. I was surprised. Why everybody uses those special words? Am I missing something or I am just not understanding their meanings? But, the more I learn Python the more I feel happy seeing those words.

It’s all completely logical, once you understand the context. ~ Guido

Python has an endless and provident history. Python community has put lots of efforts to make Python simple, easy and extensible. Whenever I felt something is weird on some features and design decisions, articles by Guido on Python history and his thoughts were helpful. I was also used to search on PEPs. PEPs are concise and handy when you are on thought process deadlock.

Great part of whole learning process was Twitter. Twitter is great platform to get connected with community. They tweet about their thoughts on current Python development and their work, that sometime leads to interesting ideas or some other great read.

It is very interesting how people showcase their work and how it changes other’s perception about programming patterns.