Everyone told me to learn Python first. I think they're wrong.

Went to a local coding meetup in Austin last month. Guy next to me was a self taught developer making six figures with JavaScript. He said Python is great for data but terrible for actual web apps. I started with Python like everyone said. Stuck on flask for weeks. Couldn't figure out why my simple blog page looked like trash. Then I switched to basic JavaScript and built something functional in two days. Nobody talks about how demoralizing it is to stare at a terminal for a month with nothing to show. Has anyone else ditched the Python path and had better luck with something else?

3 comments

3 Comments

norag662mo ago

Sorry but Python teaches you how to actually think through problems instead of just copying someone's jQuery snippet.

danielmason2mo ago

Totally with you on this one. My first real language was PHP and I spent years just copy-pasting scripts from forums to make things work without understanding why. Then I forced myself to learn Python for a side project and it was like a light switched on. You actually have to break problems down into small pieces and think about data flow, it trains your brain in a totally different way. I still use other stuff for quick fixes but Python made me a better programmer overall.

piperwhite2mo ago

Counterpoint though - I actually think that whole "Python teaches you to think" thing is kind of overblown. PHP can absolutely teach you problem solving if you do it right, it's just that most people start with it in the worst possible way like you described. Python's syntax is cleaner but that doesn't automatically make someone a better programmer, it just makes the learning curve gentler. There's plenty of terrible spaghetti Python code out there written by people who never learned proper structure. Honestly the language itself matters way less than whether you actually spend time debugging and understanding the logic behind what you're building. PHP got a bad reputation because of all the terrible code people wrote in the early 2000s, but modern PHP with proper frameworks forces you to think through architecture just as much as Python does.