Python beginner's mistakes

Every Python programmer had to learn the language at one time, and started out as a beginner. Beginners make mistakes. This article highlights a few common mistakes, including some I made myself.

Beginner's mistakes are not Python's fault, nor the beginner's. They're merely a result of misunderstanding the language. However, there is a difference between misunderstanding (often subtle) language features, vs misunderstanding the language as a whole, and what can (and cannot) be done with it. The pitfalls article focused on the former; this article deals with the latter.

To put it another way, the mistakes in this article are often cases of "the wrong tool for the job", rather than coding errors or sneaky language traps.

Mistake 1: trying to do low-level operations

Python is sometimes described as a VHLL, a Very High-Level Language. As such, it is naturally suited for high-level tasks, like generating or parsing HTML pages, scripting a game engine, or writing web frameworks, to name a few examples. It is not so suitable for tasks typically done by low-level languages, like writing device drivers, or tasks where performance is critical, like rendering of 3D graphics, or serious number-crunching.

This doesn't mean that it isn't possible to do these things with Python; but it's probably just not the right language for these jobs. One way to work around this is to write the low-level code in C, then have Python call it.

Mistake 2: writing "language X" code in Python

This is a mistake that is almost unavoidable. You come from, say, Pascal, and try your hand at Python. The first code you write will probably look like Pascal with a Python syntax. You are writing Pascal code in Python.

Some notorious symptoms of "language X" code, and the languages that may cause them:

• You're really paranoid about data hiding (some would call this "encapsulation"), and/or write getters and setters for all object attributes, no matter whether they add special rules or not. (Java, C++, Delphi)
• You overuse properties (one of the shiny new features in Python 2.2). (Java, Delphi, maybe Visual Basic, C++?)

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