Rationality Quotes February 2013

arundelo

Another monthly installment of the rationality quotes thread. The usual rules apply:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote comments or posts from Less Wrong itself or from Overcoming Bias.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Another monthly installment of the rationality quotes thread. The usual rules apply:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote comments or posts from Less Wrong itself or from Overcoming Bias.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

This quote was enough for me to take Learn Python The Hard Way off my reading list. I had previously heard good reports about it but this gives me the impression that the book is likely to be far too opinionated and dogmatic for my taste. Mind you I have reason to suspect the same of Python itself.

Python is just a programming language. Insofar as it can be said to have a personality, that personality is an accommodating and inoffensive one. The community is pretty good, too; the concentration of assholes is unremarkable, and places like /r/learnpython are quick to help out beginners with questions.

3Nornagest13y

In case you'd be interested in a second opinion: I made it through twenty-one exercises of Learn Ruby the Hard Way a couple months ago, got bored, and have retained almost none of it. I'm probably not the target audience, but that doesn't bother me so much; on the other hand, if I'm not retaining stuff after faithfully going through Hard Way's copybook approach to language acquisition, that doesn't speak well for its efficacy among people who are. Unless for some reason programming experience makes me less likely to retain new languages? But that's (a) counterintuitive, and (b) contrary to data I've seen for natural languages, at least. In any case, I don't think I'll be returning to the series.

2shokwave13y

My understanding having completed parts of it is that it's aimed at someone who doesn't know what a programming language is. If you do know, you're probably better off with another book (and you're also probably better off with something other than Python, but that's my personal opinion clashing with Python's opinions).