Notices by Ned Batchelder (nedbat@hachyderm.io)

@hynek I just had this experience: a solid week of refactoring code, then implement the feature. "The feature only needed that few lines!?"

A difficult thing when writing docs: wanting to use English words that have more specific meanings in Python. Like "Values should be in the set returned by all_possibilities()" when all_possibilities returns an iterable, not a set.

When asked if I have a disability, I would like to answer, "Yes, I have to wear glasses."

What we consider a disability depends on how well society has adapted based on who and how many are affected.

Tired of this: "learn C so you can understand how a computer really works."

So much of modern computers is not visible from C (pipelining, virtual memory, branch prediction, cache misses, etc).

I guess what they mean is, "you learn about pointers and consecutive memory locations"? How is that helpful for programming in other languages without pointers?

C teaches you an abstraction of computers based on the PDP-11. It's interesting, but it's not essential.

A common #python question: what's the difference between a script and a program?

- A program is something you've put some thought into.
- A script is something you didn't think you had to put any thought into.

I can't vouch for its accuracy, but this is an interesting way to compare the #Python packaging options: https://sinoroc.gitlab.io/kb/python/packaging_tools_comparisons.html

“Four different learning styles” has been debunked, but learners still have to learn how they learn, and choose the paths and materials that are right for them.

The myth of the myth of learning styles: https://nedbatchelder.com/blog/202309/the_myth_of_the_myth_of_learning_styles.html

Do you have interns at work this summer? They may find this helpful (created by a summer intern at edX a few years ago):