Jay,<br><br>As someone with a physics background who self-taught himself to program, SICP was pretty invaluable.<br><br>While you want the students to write Pythonically, that is use the preferred language idioms, a grasp of CS basics is, I think, more important to take away from a CS 1 course. <br>
<br>MIT replaced their old SICP/Scheme-based CS Intro course with a similar Python based one, and that course is mostly replicated as part of MIT's OCW offering.<br><br>You might want to take a look there as inspiration.<br>
<br><a href="http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-00sc-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-spring-2011/">http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-00sc-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-spring-2011/</a><br>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 1:31 PM, Jay Shaffstall <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jshaffstall@gmail.com" target="_blank">jshaffstall@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Hi all,<br>
<br>
We're experimenting with offering our Computer Science I class in<br>
Python rather than Java next year at Muskingum University. I'm super<br>
excited, because I don't get enough opportunity to play in Python and<br>
this gives me a great excuse. I also think students will be able to<br>
get to do more fun stuff than we could in Java.<br>
<br>
I'd like to get suggestions from people who know Python better than I<br>
do about the most important Pythonic techniques to learn. Keep in<br>
mind I only have one semester, so there will be a limit to what I can<br>
do. But if you were teaching someone new to Python, what would you<br>
make sure you taught them above all else?<br>
<br>
Thanks in advance,<br>
Jay<br>
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