Some times, life “force you” to learn thing whether you like it or not, and that’s my history of how I started programming with VB6, until I finish with Python, a languaje that always call my atention, bue i must admit that …
Moving from Visual Basic 6 to Python is not immediate!
How i met Python
Since I started to work, I knew it I end up doing some programming stuff, and working with databases. In 2002 i met Python’s existence, but those years Java was the “cool” programming language. My skills weren’t very good in programming because I didn’t know well basic concepts as objetcs, classes, encapsulation, heritage … too complex for me.
Java was the “cool” programming language in the early 2000
Windows was the dominant platform, and the most productive way of learning of getting programming skill was learning Visual Basic. I did some programming courses, in VB6, also in a Geographical information System Degree I did. I learnt a lot, I must admit, and I’m proud of it!
Visual Basic also has objects
the key moment when learning programming was to study a book called Active X programming in Visual Basic. I spent a long time learning and practicing with a “small” software I started programming: a program for saving all data about spanish football ligue (quiniela). I will talk about this software later.
Once improved my programming skills related to objects, libraries, encapsulation, … everything should be more easy. My walk through the programming road was slow, since 2008, when I was forced by Microsoft to learn new languages: turn for C#, and bye bye VB6.
C# y XAML
In a previous post I talk about my mistrust to the .NET platform (the post is in spanish: mis recelos a la plataforma .NET), the Microsoft bet of programming languages. I did an course about C# that allow me to have a good knowledge. My GUI choice was to use XAML, a good alternative, instead of Windows Forms!
Learning Python
During my career, I always have been linked to maps, first with ArcView and now with ArcGIS (both are ESRI products). At the beginnig, ArcGIS had VBA as developer language (read my post about Visual Basic’s death, in spanish), but also, you can do it with Python. Having these alternatives could only meant that one day, later or sooner, Python will become the only alternative. SO it happend in ArcGIS 10.
Now, learning Python is easy and funny, a bit late, but I must admit I like it and I anjoy programing!
And … that’s my story!