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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   3477 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 21, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Does anybody like programming?

I have been hired as a sole and lead Python developer in a company. But my Python experience is mostly on Numpy, if anybody has some tips? It would be very appreciated!

Partly a response, partly hijacking this to ask a question of my own to everyone else: what are you using as a editor/compiler?

I programmed exclusively in Java for years, but my new boss wanted programs in Python so I've been doing that this past year. Using Eclipse, which is wonderful as an editor, since it lets me organize everything and highlights typos that I make and stuff.

Aside a whole lot of friction involving different conventions and abilities, I was annoyed that all of the Python editors people recommended seemed way less functional until I discovered that I can program Python in Eclipse if I do the right stuff. So I've been doing that.

I'm not sure what the general consensus is, because I'm mostly self-taught and program on my own, making mathematical models for research purposes that nobody else has to use or collaborate with, so I've probably got all sorts of weird habits that would make more sophisticated programmers cringe. So I can't tell how much of this is objective and how much is just me being used to Eclipse for so many years and having little experience with anything else. But I tentatively recommend looking into PyDev for Eclipse, because in my opinion it's nice.

Yeah, seconding both prongs, here: a) IDEs are important and b) Python IDEs near-universally suck. If you're in the Java sphere before, PyCharm is kinda the Intellij-for-Python, for better and worse, and there's a large faction that loves VSCode for eating all of their RAM handling multi-language projects reasonably, but for the love of god don't try to build class-ful python in IDLE.

((I'll generally advocate PyCharm for new programmers, as annoying some of the Intellijisms can be, but if you're more acclimatized to and have already set up Eclipse it's definitely not worth swapping.))

Do you know if there's a way to.... I'm not even sure what the right language is here.... put different classes in different .py files, or at least different tabs, without running into recursive dependency issues.

Like, in Java, I can make a World class that contains a population from the Agent class, and models an epidemic going through them, and the Agents have a bunch of methods internally regarding how they function as they get infected and recover and stuff. And if I pass a copy of the main World to each Agent when it's created, then when they do stuff in their methods they can call back up to the World, usually for counting purposes, they say "hey I got infected, increment the total infection counter" or "hey someone was going to infect me but I'm already infected, increment the redundant infection counter".

As far as I can tell, in Python I can't do that nicely. If the World class imports Agent, then the Agent class can't import World. I can resolve this by defining both classes in the same .py file, but then all my code is arranged 1-dimensionally and I have to scroll through tons of stuff to find what I'm looking for (or use ctlr F). Whereas in Java each class has its own tab, I can open or close or switch to, so well-behaved ones that I'm not working on don't take up space or get in my way. I'm not sure if this is a Python issue or just a Eclipse issue. Is there a way to split a .py file into multiple tabs so I can organize better?

This sounds less like a Python problem and more like a "you need to learn how to architect projects and write clean maintainable code" problem. You know.. the Engineering part of Software Engineering..

Also, why are you importing Agent or World into each other at all? The World needs to be a Singleton that has-many agents. They should be declared in different files and a third file should manage both of their interactions.

I'd caution that :

  1. Python's support for the singleton pattern is kinda jank, due to lack of first-class support for private constructors or access modifiers.
  2. While there's a lot of arguments in favor of the singleton pattern with an interaction controller for bigcorp work, in small businesses it can be a temptation with serious tradeoffs. Refactoring (whether to add an intermediate object between World and Agent, or if you end up needing multiple World objects such as for a fictional context) can be nightmarish in Python, even if all the interaction logic is properly contained. And it probably won't be properly contained: marketing and customers can end up demanding bizarre requirements on near-zero notice that can require information from multiple different singletons, and if you end up hiring (or taking interns!) as a small business rather than at the FAANG level, those people (and I was one of them once!) will often break around the interaction controller unless aggressively managed.

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