Ive been doing some research on different languages and am wondering if python is a decent language to start off with? I have read that it is similar to basic and not a good language. Is that true?

Nonsense. Python is a great language. Where on Earth did you read that?
Besides being a great teaching language, it depends of course what you want to program. What kind of applications do you want to do? Do you have any programming experience?

I agree with uselpa, Python is a great language. Its even used a lot in Google and Youtube. But IT IS NOT like BASIC. Thats nonsense, insane, crazy and just plain not logic. Beside BASIC is a linear programming language and Python is a full object-oriented language (with some extra cool crazy things )
Its very good to learn Python, but its better to learn how to programm (then the programming language is not that important (unless the language sucks hehehhe)).

Cheers!

I have been reading dozens of articles on the internet about languages and there were a few that stated that python is to simplistic, but that might be good for me
I am looking into a language that I can use for robotics, for as accessing serial ports and such. There are a couple proprietary languages, one of wich I have learned alot (Pbasic) but i am looking for something common and not bound by restrictions that come with proprietary format.

Hi,
as regard as simplistic it might be true in some aspects. But I think that it said because of it is clean simple syntax (a plus for my taste). As far as robotics, its just a long wild dream for me, since I am not very good with electronics (even though I would love to be able to work on hardware, its just that I... well I dont know but I dont get it hahahahaha). I am pretty sure that you can access the serial port with Python but I am not very aware at how easy it is and if it is practical to code it in Python (it might be very easy but I just dont know).


Hope this is useful!

Cheers!

Python is a nice language, but it's not Perl. Some people would say that's a good thing. They're mad March hares.

I like perl so far (just starting to delve into it seriously); python is nice, too, from what I've seen after a bit of casual play with it. Python is highly considered by some as a good first language ... mine was C, which is of course always nice to know on linux.

A few idle thoughts...

(1) Python is a very good language. There are quite a few features in it which are totally unexpected, unless you have a thorough background in Common Lisp. (But it is precisely those features that should demand your most attention.)

(1a) Okay, so the indentation thing is weird. Yeah, we know. But that's the way it is, and the author's not gonna change it (as if he could). No stranger, really, than the funky indentation requirements of, say, FORTRAN.) ("Fortran? Whazzat?" yeah, I know.. get over it.)

(2) If you want to have a long career in this business, you must become a student of languages. There is no "one language to rule them all." When it is your bread-and-butter to make computer hardware do your bidding, you cannot and must not be limited in your quest by niggling issues of grammar and punctuation. You must become adept at any and all techniques that have been developed for the purpose of "making computer hardware do your bidding." It's your profession...

(3) Get started. Then, once you've gotten a general feel for one language, promptly switch to another. Learn it well enough that you can compare it with the last one and with the next one. Then, "rinse and repeat."

(4) As soon as possible, get yourself to the point where "another language is no big deal." Just another notch in your lipstick case, as the bad Pat Benatar ("who?" yeah, I know... get over it...) song put it.

I've been doing this professionally, in one way or another, for thirty-one (good grief!) years, and this point-of-view has never failed me yet.

I've started learning Python, but I keep realizing that there's nothing in Python that I couldn't do (or do more efficiently) in Lisp. Python is definitely a good language to start with (for any programming base - Linux or Windows). The first language I ever learned was Perl - however, I left Perl at the "parsing data" doorstep. Over the past few years, I've learned languages like BASIC (Q-, Quick-, Visual-, and Gambas), Java (which I very much don't like), Expect (which is amazing for automated scripting), and my new baby and overall favourite, Lisp.

Once you get settled and comfortable with a language, I recommend checking out Lisp. It's a very backwards language in terms of syntactic logic.

Yeah, Lisp and Scheme are cool and can express more things than Python or Ruby. But Python has this thing called portability - a standard library available across platforms. And to myself portability is a major advantage; even if you only target one platform today, you may tomorrow want or have to move on. Portability equals flexibility and Python encourages you to think in a portable way. Quite a lot of Python users are platform-agnostic.

Be sure to check out comp.lang.python - a very active and high-quality newsgroup. Lots of bright people over there.

Oh, and NO - the indentation thing quickly becomes second nature once you use it. It prevents some basic errors and helps a lot when re-reading your programs after a while.

The indentation thing, it that the thing with the three dots? ... and then a print statement or whatever? I wasnt sure what to make of that.

No, i think you are talking about your IDE.
In Python, indentations are either spaces or tabs. Not 3 dots...

That seems to be a very specific use. Make sure that Python can be used for that. Again, I can recommend comp.lang.python to get a confirmation for your specific need.

Oh....

Is there a gui environment for python?

Python comes with something called IDLE; basic but enough for me. There's plenty of others: KDevelop, Eric, ...