I actually had a similar experience. I have been programming C++ for about 5 years now. I recently took a look at python and it confused me a bit. I understand it better now but the difference between tuples, lists, and dictionaries still is a little fuzzy for me.

My advice to brian, be sure to take the time to learn whatever language you decide one and don't expect it to come quickly. It may come quickly but just don't expect it to.

Once advantage to python is it handles a lot of the lower level details that you need to worry about with C++. It is also really easy to work with lists in Python, although given the right classes c++ can also have that same ease. Python also has a lot of premade libraries that are common for all platforms.

C++ obviously has the power and control advantages. It will also be more difficult to learn in more detail. I think that C++ can be a beginner programming language as long as whoever is learned sticks with it and give up because of frustration.

Either language will take time to learn but I do think that python is the better beginner language.

Best of luck to you.

Quote:the difference between tuples, lists, and dictionaries still is a little fuzzy for me

An n-tuple is a tuple containing an ordered list of n objects. A tuple contains a fixed number of objects. A 2-tuple (or pair) of type (Integer, Integer) stores exactly two components of type Integer – an example is (2, 2) – it might be used as a representation of a point. A 3-tuple (triple) of type (String, String, Integer) comprises exactly two components of type String, followed by exactly one component of type Integer – an example might be ("John", "Smith", 123) – a first name, last name and some sort of ID, perhaps.

A list is an ordered collection of objects, all of which are of the same type (remembering that you can usually represent objects of different derived types as their common base type). [1, 3, 2, 4] is an example of a list of length 4 with elements of type Integer; it is ordered (3 is after 1, 2 is after 3, 4 is after 2) but unsorted (although it could be sorted, if desired).

A dictionary provides a 1:1 mapping (a bijection) from a set of keys to a set of values (in much the same way as its real-world namesake does – the word in a real-world dictionary is the key, and the definition the value). The keys and values need not be of the same type (so you might have a dictionary mapping keys of type Integer to values of type (String, String, Integer)). There are a number of different possible implementations, which vary in efficiency. For example (I don't know Python), someDictionary["John Smith"] = 123 might set the value associated with the key "John Smith" to 123. You could then retrieve that as someDictionary["John Smith"].

Quote:Original post by TheUnbeliever
A dictionary provides a 1:1 mapping (a bijection) from a set of keys to a set of values (in much the same way as its real-world namesake does – the word in a real-world dictionary is the key, and the definition the value).

Er, really? Every key maps to a unique value, and it's therefore possible to get from the value back to the key?

Quote:Original post by shadowisadog
C++ is a LOT harder of a language than Python. If you got confused with Python than what makes you think that C++ is a better choice? O_o.

I can see where he's coming from actually. I've been programming in C/C++ for about 4 years now and recently I started learning Ruby, which in many ways is quite similar to Python or Perl. One of the main difficulites I found during my time working with Ruby was that sometimes I could write a statement and not know exactly what it was doing; the language is so high level that it's sometimes difficult to determine exactly what the effect of each statement is. It's always a decidedly dodgy business when you start writing code and you're not even sure what it is doing IMHO!

Not that I'm suggesting he should switch immediately to C++ however! But there can be such thing as going too far high-level also; sometimes it pays to get down to the nitty gritty and understand the fine details of how stuff gets done. If you do want to go down the C++ route however I'd suggest you stick to pure C for the time being and forget about all the object oriented features of C++ until you are comfortable with the language. There's also the possibility of using C#- something which I'd highly recommend. C# is one of the cleanest languages I've ever come across and if you get good with it you could jump into XNA afterwords to. Worth considering if you want to change language...