Mailman 3 June 2007 - Edu-sig

Re: [Edu-sig] More CP4E News
by Daniel Ajoy June 16, 2007

June 16, 2007

> Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 06:00:33 -0500 > From: Jeff Rush <jeff(a)taupro.com> > > I've never seen programming books in the form of children's books -- can you > point me at some for -other- programming languages? The Great Logo Adventure : Electronic copy of the actual book on learning Logo by Jim Muller (Graciously donated by Jim) http://www.softronix.com/logo.html Daniel

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More CP4E News
by kirby urner June 15, 2007

June 15, 2007

I'd misread some signs and thought I was off the list for OSCON for this year, but I'm on, talking CP4E, provided I make a certain June 25 deadline with some filings, which I think I can do. Yesterday I converted from DVD and uploaded as a low rez Google Video some pro Saturday Academy PR to my blog: http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2007/06/sa.html This institution figures prominently in my version of the CP4E initiative, complementary (and complimentary) to Guido's. Speaking of whom, great slides from Guido from Beijing, including of Olympics 2008 facilities still under construction. A Google trip. On the pedagogical front, Dr. Sonnenfeld at New Mexico tech, a proud python owner (as in the literal snake) with his son Cody and Company, wonders aloud at the paucity of Python (the computer language literature) in the form of childrens books, especially given all the buzz the adults're talkin' (me included). His kids are ready to learn, but with what? Where's the kid-friendly fantasy angle? Given the popularity of Piratology and Dragonology books, you'd think O'Reilly'd already have something similar (actually that'd be a departure -- it's kid book authors and illustrators with track records we need, mixing OLPC & CP4E (a "head first" for kids -- like not too dumbed down, even with all those twisted aqua teen type graphics)). You'd think with a gorgeous snake already in the picture, there'd be such a literature. Plus we like Perl's camels. Plus CP4E ain't just about Python. It's about using open source to make the world more intelligible in terms of the cave painting programs it'd need. Like we don't have time to do a full version of anything. We're on a quick tour. But look: here's a supermarket (revealed in code, lots of SQLAlchemy), and here's a bank (TurboGears?). But before we get to "boring" (to young kids) banks and super- markets (bazaars), I think kids love to think about animals. Animals never lose their freshness. I've gone on and on about my Dog and Monkey classes in this archive, put that's just a pointer, a prototype. There's a huge animated cartoons industry I'm not planning to reinvent (why would I?). If the goal is to embrace CP4E, then I think it's obvious we're awash in relevant tools for propagating it, as multiple curricula (multiple namespaces). Is Linux a horse? Geeks [heart] Apache. So in my next sa: class, I plan to give much more credence to the cyberspace as ecosystem model, visualizing accordingly. As my readers know, I'm already committed to MVC as a long term key meme, so tie the ecosystem model and vizualizations to M and V respectively, with the mediating language a "controller" (could be Python, could be something else entirely). One way this translates, is I'll introduce the four principal collections: string, list, tuple and dict, and then I'll hand out source code and ask them to color pen highlight these structures when and where they're able to eyeball 'em in working code. This takes practice, especially given how syntax varies, allows multiple idioms, a lot of embeddedness and so on. I'm not encouraging writing obfuscated code (they'll see enough of that anyway), but I do recognize that production Python isn't just Dick and Jane seeing Spot run. Listing 1: exercise: circle a dict object being initialized. What alternative syntax might the writer have used? Give a short example in the space provided: ___________________________ def _edges(self, someobj): # cylinders thevertices = someobj.vertices for edge in someobj.edges: v1 = edge.v0 v2 = edge.v1 vrmldata = self._orient((v1,v2)) length,roty,rotx = (vrmldata[1],vrmldata[2],vrmldata[3]) edict = dict( radius = edge.radius, color = colordict[someobj.ecolor], length = length, translate = "%r %r %r" % vrmldata[0], roty = "0 1 0 %s" % roty, rotx = "1 0 0 %s" % rotx) someobj.text = someobj.text + gl_theedge.substitute(edict) [ http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/pyx3d.html x3dtoyz.py ] Kirby

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Europython paper accepted...
by kirby urner June 13, 2007

June 13, 2007

Excellent, I've got a slot after lunch on Day 1 of Europython: http://www.europython.org/sections/tracks_and_talks/draft-timetable Still focusing on string.Template, looking to recode my paradigm "math objects" using X3D output (XML flavored -- there's also a more VRML-like format). I've proposed to Joyce (CEO) that I work up a new Saturday Academy class focusing on Python + X3D, perhaps presuming some Python. She seems willing to explore it further. I still have another section of my regular Pythonic math course scheduled for this summer, where we use VPython and POV-Ray: http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/pymath.html I found this 2003 article a helpful reintroduction to the subject of these relatively new 3D tools: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/08/06/x3d.html Kirby PS: One of the philosophers mentioned in passing in my Lithuania paper, Richard Rorty, died recently. There's a write up in today's New York Times. He was a good teacher for me back when I was focusing on philo at Princeton (1976-1980). He advised me on my undergrad thesis on Wittgenstein's later writings. More views re RR: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/christopher_hayes/2007/06/richard_rorty… http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-seery/richard-rorty-ironicall_b_51611.ht…

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CGI with string.Template
by kirby urner June 11, 2007

June 11, 2007

I've heard talk of retiring the string module but have a hard time believing it, given the potential of Template to make things easier for some of us. Just because all methods of the float type may be accessed using dot notation doesn't mean we want to get rid of 'import math'. Think of 'import string' as 'import math' for type str ( str instead of float, or cmath instead of math for type(1j)). Anyway, below I've appended a little script I wrote to keep my foot in the door once a scholarship became available (my company is private for-profit, looks at scholarships as accounts receivable for my skills as a teacher, consultant or whatever, for which DWA bills me out at a handsome rate (or so I like to suppose)). The more formal paper came later, once more details emerged. The Abstract was the last puzzle piece to fall in to place: Cutting and pasting from the PDF (sorry that doesn't look good): """ Abstract My paper for EuroPython 2005 explored what I call Pythonic Mathematics, a way of presenting pre-computer analytical content within the OO paradigm, including pre-college.1 This thinking informed my participation in Shuttleworth Foundation planning meetings and my presentation to the London Knowledge Lab in the following year.2 This year, I'm delving yet more deeply into Pythonic Math, while also weaving in some more cultural threads, especially the "design science" thread with its geodesic spheres and other graphical content, the theme of my OSCON 2005 presentation.3 I've been field testing these combinations in my home town of Portland, through a school called Saturday Academy.4 Whereas Guido named Python for Monty Python, begetting allusions which aren't going to go away, there's more we might do to make our snake come across as charming and smooth, not too slimy or oily (negative attributes customarily associated with snakes by the more snake-unfriendly).5 """ I'm down to hammering out details with local hoteliers at this point, may have lost the LOT flight (no one said anything bad about Warsaw, when I made inquiries on the EuroPython list -- there's a flight from Chicago). What I'll do for the talk is run Python's native itty bitty server and not depend on the Internet, and only for a little of the demo. I have my own expensive small travel projector, which I won't want to blow by giving it a wrong voltage, so I'm still stressing about adapters, transformers and what not. Maybe bringing the projector is a bad idea... My patter might be less about the code below, which is very simple and I'm not trying to be condescending, and more about how we might rank ISPs in terms of Python friendliness. It's already a minority of ISPs who allow account-owner script writers to run processes via ssh (considered a "geek level" task -- hardly, in and of itself). Of these, some keep a dusty old Python lying around, perhaps a 1.x, and think that ought be just fine fine. No string.Template. No lots of kwel stuff. So a first criterion for defining an ISP as Python-friendly might be: having a fairly current Python in /usr/bin or whatever, available to would-be scripters. Here's an example of an ISP that knows how to sound Python friendly (and I think they're quite sincere): http://www.webfaction.com/python-isp (not my ISP by the way, I have no known financial ties to this company (yet anyway)). Kirby ==== #!/usr/bin/python2.5 # Paper and .py module for Europython # by Kirby Urner, 4D Solutions # May 29, 2007 # If you run this in Python, you'll get my paper with a # two paragraph abstract. If you run it again, you'll # get the same abstract, with the other paragraphs # reordered. # The primitive paragraph sequencer below suggests # a non-linear network for a model i.e. one that # "connects around in all circumferential directions" # (Fuller) as hypertext (http). # My Pythonic hypertoons take similar approach, but # with multiple passes through each node and more # clearly defined "edges" connecting them. Instead # of paragraphs, I've used geometric transitions in # VPython. I'd be happy to talk about these in a demo. # http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=hypertoons&hl=en # Shall I attach a bibliography of mostly URLs? import sys import cgitb; cgitb.enable() from random import shuffle from string import Template sys.stderr = sys.stdout webpage = Template( """Content-Type: text/html <html> <head><title>EuroPython Proposal</title></head> <body> <table align="center" width="550"> <tr><td> <div align="center"> <h4>$Title</h4> </div> <em>Abstract</em>:<br /> $Abstract <hr /> <p>$Para0</p> <p>$Para1</p> <p>$Para2</p> <p>$Para3</p> <p>$Para4</p> </td></tr> </table> </body> </html> """) nodeA = """ CP4E or Computer Programming for Everybody was Guido van Rossum's attempt to harness the power of Python to best advantage: let's use the charm of our snake to recruit more people into the circle of "knows how to program". Python isn't the only language suitable for CP4E work. The more the merrier in some ways, with Python always there as a potential glue language.""" nodeB = """ I came to Python as a former math teacher and career programmer, looking for ways to explore geometry. These were the early days of the Net and few Polyhedra were available, even as GIFs or JPEGs, let alone in VRML or as yet not invented X3D. I started in xBase with Visual FoxPro, then moved to Java then Python in short order. Python has been my top drawer language for geometry studies ever since.""" nodeC = """ Teachers are struggling with the puzzle of how to incorporate computing machines within a traditional curriculum inherited from times when "computers" were human beings, tasked with doing figures, quickly and accurately -- a clerical task. The schools were designed to mass produce future "computers" of the human variety. Then came many leaps in technology, and yet we're still stuck with much the same training in the early years. We waste students' time.""" nodeD = """ South Africa is one of those places where the disparity between have and have-not is huge, and education has no credibility unless it shows very clearly how it's designed to close that gap, including the so-called 'digital divide.' The Shuttleworth Foundation, in collaboration with others in the public and private sector, is prototyping Kusasa, a curriculum designed to teach mastery over the process of learning to use tools, including but not limited to computers.""" nodeE = """ The dream of giving each child access to powerful computing and communications devices, able to access the world's libraries, has bubbled to the surface again in the form of Negroponte of MIT's One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative. Alan Kay of SmallTalk fame has been another subscriber to this "Dynabook" vision and was present at a summit meeting in London, hosted by Mark Shuttleworth, designed to get Kusasa going. Guido van Rossum and myself came from the Python community. Others represented the South African government, academia, and other CP4E computer languages.""" nodeF = """ Not being a resident or citizen of South Africa, I've been working on a CP4E project in Portland, via Saturday Academy, to teach about the culture of open source collaboration, design science, and positive futurism. I draw from Guido's work, plus acknowledge Kenneth Iverson of APL fame as a major influence (he later gave us the J language in collaboration with Roger Hui and his son). I came away from the summit in London hoping to prototype Kusasa-like content in Oregon. I've been pretty successful in doing that.""" nodeG = """ Per my presentations at OSCON and EuroPython in 2005, I'm influenced by the Buckminster Fuller syllabus, a branch of American Transcendentalist literature. As a philosophy guy from Princeton, with a thesis on Wittgenstein, it was natural for me to look for contemporary philosophers and to study their work. This led me into Fuller's network and subsequent geometry studies, around the same time as I got a math teaching job at St. Dominic Academy in Jersey City, NJ. Although I later switched careers, I never lost my interest in this geometry, hence my search for a good computer language with which to pursue my studies.""" nodeH = """ OSCON, Pycons, and most recently Portland Barcamp have also taught me a lot, about geek culture and its collaboration tools. By working together, I think we can keep OLPC and CP4E in good working order, achieving positive results for people around the world. If you happen to be lucky enough to be using Python, then we already have many ideas on which you might build, to make teaching (including peer teaching) a potentially important and relevant part of your career. This is the subject of my talk.""" nodes = [nodeA, nodeB, nodeC, nodeD, nodeE, nodeF, nodeG, nodeH] abstract = "<p>%s</p>\n<p>%s</p>" % (nodeA, nodeH) shuffle(nodes) title = """ Paper and .py module for Europython 2007<br /> by Kirby Urner, 4D Solutions<br /> May 29, 2007<br /><br />""" pagedict = {"Para0":nodes[0], "Para1":nodes[1], "Para2":nodes[2], "Para3":nodes[3], "Para4":nodes[4], "Para5":nodes[5], "Para6":nodes[6], "Para7":nodes[7], "Title":title, "Abstract":abstract} print webpage.substitute(pagedict) ==== Note subtle "bug" but I've decided to keep it: only five lucky paragraphs make the "top five" and get web served. The rest don't make the cut -- unless the user reloads, then maybe. A "reward" for those that do.

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More on Tourism...
by kirby urner June 5, 2007

June 5, 2007

Just to elaborate a little more, I think I'm in agreement with a lot of Pythoneers that it's more than just a computer language, this glue cohering our various Python-using communities (partially overlapping). It's a webspace (docs, PEPs), a shared namespace, an in-common history, players, characters (benevolent dictator)... the usual stuff of ethnography. I could also mention rituals: lightning talks, sprints, meetups, Zopefests. And then there's the language itself, with its many __ribs__. Part of that shared ethnography is Monty Python the comedy troupe, and I make a big deal out of explaining that at the start of my Python courses in part because it's a good segue into the whole idea of what a "namespace" is (a concept with currency in the XML community as well). However, Monty Python, though still a Broadway phenomenon ('Spamalot' on the marquee last time I was through, which was late last year, Eric Idle of IDLE fame in the credits), is not common knowledge among OLPC kids. Which is *not* to say I think we should drop it. On the contrary, with YouTube and the like, these allusions will become easier and more fun to explain (in the form of short clips, streaming media). Nevertheless, those kids in Cambodia just getting their laptops and cranking up to "learn programming" or whatever they're expected to do, aren't going to have this shared context of British comedy, at least not right away. All an OLPC kid might know, from cursory English, Amerish or perhaps some Caribbean brew, is that Pythons are a kind of snake (constrictors more specifically, not venemous). And a Ruby is a gemstone (usually red), like an emerald (green). A Perl is a valuable thing too (from oysters), but look how it's spelled (some won't notice or care about the difference though, leading to like Perl Divers in Panama -- a group of coders). Java is of course the legal drug. Geekdom more generally has experimented with martial arts metaphors, like kung fu (there was some TV show where the one geek had to admit the other geek had more of it -- was that a Buffy episode? Yes, I think it was). A reason there is many people, males often more overtly, like to display rank, often by means of costume (white, yellow, brown and black belts are just the beginning -- wait'll you see epaulets). http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Epaulets http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0618067469/thecostumersmani I'm not posing as the only answer man here, but I don't mind remaining a font of suggestions, as many others of us are. Lots of good suggestions come from edu-sig IMO, from many corners. My suggestion is to embrace the snake imagery whole heartedly and not just in the form of permuting and punning on Py. In my case, I actually have a constrictor in my office (my daughter will be buying a mouse for it on the way home from school today). It's not a Python though, but a baby Corn. Here's its picture: http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2007/05/newest-family-member.html Not every culture is intrinsically snake friendly, depending on local myth and so on. But kids are typically open minded to fairy tales from other traditions, and that's what they see on satellite TV: mythologies from around the world, some rather alien-seeming. Rather than try to accommodate and "water down" the snake associations, for "marketing reasons", I think core Python culture should be unabashedly willing to help the snake world preserve itself and thrive. We respect and enjoy snakes. We don't teach mindless fear and panic ala 'Snakes on a Plane'. There's a link here to the word "geek" which implies "circus performer" if you study the etymology. Circus kids are likewise open minded and by definition friendly with animals (elephants, horses...), even if some freaks bite the heads off chickens on occasion (more geek etymology). This helps close the loop with comedy *troupe* and *flying circus.* Another suggestion. Snakes naturally bridge to dragons in all kinds of lore, much of it in the Fantasy section. A pro snake attitude translates to a pro dragon attitude. I won't try to unpack all the consequences in this post. I go into more depth in my talk proposal to Europython, which I'll eventually put at my website. Kirby

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More on the 'tourist' metaphor (vs. 'beginner')
by kirby urner June 5, 2007

June 5, 2007

""" I use the word "tourist" a lot, and I think computer world is so huge that we're all tourists in big parts of it, when we wander far afield (to be encouraged -- changes are we bring back new insights, or maybe even move the home office). A tourist in Python Nation might be a high mucky muck in the Republic of Perl (they actually have their own names for these things). ... And when you're not a tourist anymore, what are you? Maybe a neighbor, a local, or "on staff" in some way -- different terms apply, depending on the namespace. I've you're a master of Python, you might be a snake charmer in my book. """ url1 = "http://mail.python.org/pipermail/advocacy/2007-May/000243.html" """ I had opportunity to use the above "tourism" meme in my blog the other day, with reference to Pioneer Century, an organized cycling event. In this event, I was ostensibly one of the tourists, although like most the folks in this picture, I'm also an Oregonian who motored to the event parking lot. What I wrote in my blog: Only a few cyclists marred the event by disrespecting signage and taking to the middle of a busy highway. Local motorists, always courteous, put a bright face on these antics, accepting that some tourists may be prone to goofy behavior. """ url2 = "http://mail.python.org/pipermail/advocacy/2007-May/000243.html" """ Tinkering: """ >>> class Weird(str): def __new__(cls, arg): return str.__new__(cls, arg) def __mul__(self, arg): return self[arg] >>> somestring = Weird("this is a string") >>> somestring*10 's' >>> somestring*4:6 SyntaxError: invalid syntax >>> somestring*(4:6) SyntaxError: invalid syntax >>> slice <type 'slice'> >>> someslice = slice(5,7) >>> somestring*someslice 'is' >>> """ Kirby """

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Re: [Edu-sig] [python-advocacy] education as Python killer app
by Laura Creighton June 2, 2007

June 2, 2007

In a message of Thu, 31 May 2007 20:29:08 CDT, "Michael Tobis" writes: >As I understand it, raw_input will be renamed input in 3.0, and the >function currently implemented as input would go away, requiring you >to invoke eval(input("prompt")) if you need its functionality. Thus, >the PEP text you quote doesn't correspond to my understanding, based >on what I took from GvR's keynote at PyCon. > >However, this is off topic for these lists and would be better taken >up on c.l.p. where someone in the know will be sure to clarify the >matter. > >mt Actually, this is on-topic for edu-sig. And the person who knows the most about it you can find there -- André Roberge. He had the same objections, and implemented this approved PEP http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3111/ with Guido von Rossum at PyCon this year. Laura

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Re: [Edu-sig] [python-advocacy] education as Python killer app
by Michael Tobis June 1, 2007

June 1, 2007

As I understand it, raw_input will be renamed input in 3.0, and the function currently implemented as input would go away, requiring you to invoke eval(input("prompt")) if you need its functionality. Thus, the PEP text you quote doesn't correspond to my understanding, based on what I took from GvR's keynote at PyCon. However, this is off topic for these lists and would be better taken up on c.l.p. where someone in the know will be sure to clarify the matter. mt On 5/31/07, hwg <hwg434(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > This quote is from a PEP which argues for keeping some form of raw_input(): > > The proposed plans for Python 3.0 would require the replacement > of the single statement > > speed = raw_input("What is the average airspeed velocity of an unladed > swallow?") > > by the more complicated > > import sys > print("What is the average airspeed > velocity of an unladed swallow?")

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