# Why are there all these strange stumbling blocks in Julia?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-are-there-all-these-strange-stumbling-blocks-in-julia/92644>\
**Category:** New to Julia\
**Tags:** syntax, python\
**Created:** [January 7, 2023, 6:19pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-are-there-all-these-strange-stumbling-blocks-in-julia/92644 "2023-01-07T18:19:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![Sandjan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/sandjan/32/45684_2.png) [@Sandjan](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Sandjan)\
**Post date:** [January 7, 2023, 6:19pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-are-there-all-these-strange-stumbling-blocks-in-julia/92644/1 "2023-01-07T18:19:30Z")

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I have programmed in Python so far and find the Python syntax very convenient. When learning Julia I constantly notice things that I can not understand:  
Why is there no short and simple floor division operator like in Python //?  
Why is the type conversation not as short and sweet as in Python int(“4”)?  
Why do I concatenate strings with \* instead of + ? (that makes no sense to me at all)  
Why does the indexing start with 1 instead of 0 as in most established languages?  
What was wrong with the simple dict syntax of Python? {“Hello”: “World”}  
Why elseif and not elif?

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