Strings…

The String Section

As a kid, I thought of strings as a part of the orchestra. I played violin in our school orchestra in the fifth grade. (I was still taking piano lessons too, but I was a bit bored with piano.) What I loved then and still love now about the string section is that it produces a beautiful range of sounds, from the high pitched violin and viola, to the rich deep sound of the cello and double bass. (Yesterday, I found out that one of my cousins is now playing the cello in his fifth grade class – good choice!) The thing that these instruments all have in common is, of course, the strings. Violin strings are shorter and thinner than cello strings, but they are still strings. This reminds me of strings in python: a string can be short or long, composed of a letter(s) and/or number(s), and/or symbol(s), unicode or ASCII, etcetera, but, it is still a string.

Noisebridge Python Class: Strings

What I really enjoy about this class is how the instructor thinks. Since he is a more experienced developer, I am learning how to problem solve by watching how he problem solves. It is not so much about the problem itself, but instead how he figures out how to solve it – or not.  He is honest and admits when an area is not his strength.

He spent a lot of time looking at various string methods, many of which I had never used, such as partition. Also, he explained unicode and ASCII, and I am happy that in Python 3 strings are unicode by default. He also covered slicing. It is good to review and there is always more to learn!