Python Play

Question

Considering how insignificant something like order of operations is when parentheses are so readily available, it sure shows up a lot in the Python Play section.

Answer 1

Yes and no. These things that you claim to be insignificant will cost you dearly if neglected. Order of operations should, by now, be common sense, and will without doubt come up in real life programming situations. Same goes to how polymorphism works, why multiple inheritance of class is not allowed in Java, why the second condition in a conditional statement is never evaluated if the first one is already false for the use of AND operator, why we cannot have an instance of a class inside itself for certain occasions, etc.

Answer 2

That is the whole point of quizzes. Perhaps you haven't seen the questions in an OCA exam, which would make SL quizzes look like kindergarten colouring books.

Answer 3

Actually you do have a point. It's not the first time this was brought up, all in different variations but nonetheless:

https://www.sololearn.com/Discuss/650225/?ref=app

Answer 4

Well order of operations definitely won’t come up as long as we are nice about using parentheses. The other things are obviously more important, because they are essential for a programmer to understand in designing a data structure or whatever, something that requires careful understanding of scope and inheritance.

Regardless, the questions are very limited by only being 20 seconds. It limits the complexity of the problems severely, so that they’re bite sized pieces of information that generally only consist of little logic or math puzzles, instead of requiring well thought out programming schemes to solve. I realize the latter would take a lot more effort to create quizzes for though, and this is a free resource so I have no right to complain about anything.

Answer 5

Are you saying the point is to test insignificant things that don’t ever come up in a real life programming situation?

Answer 6

Sufficient