Mailman 3 January 2009 - Edu-sig

happy new python interactive tutorial :)
by Jurgis Pralgauskis 17 Feb '09

17 Feb '09

my weekend project in the mood of tryruby https://launchpad.net/intro-to-code what I liked most, that it nicely plays with IDLE but I still don't know, how to handle multiline inputs?? and how to start IDLE on windows... -- Jurgis Pralgauskis tel: 8-616 77613; jabber: jurgis(a)akl.lt; skype: dz0rdzas; Don't worry, be happy and make things better ;)

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Topics for CS2
by David MacQuigg 07 Feb '09

07 Feb '09

I'm putting together a list of topics for a proposed course entitled "Programming for Scientists and Engineers". See the link to CS2 under http://ece.arizona.edu/~edatools/index_classes.htm. This is intended as a follow-on to an introductory course in either Java or C, so the students will have some exposure to programming, but the Java students won't know machine-level programming, and the C students won't have any OOP. For the proposed course, we will use the example programs as a way to introduce these topics. As you can see from the very few links to completed examples, this is just a start. Many of the links are only to discussions on this list, and I really appreciate the suggestions I have received so far. Also, it is far from a representative survey or optimum sample, rather just a random sample of topics that I found interesting. Some of the topics may be out of reach for students at this level, but that is the challenge. Figure out a way to present a complex or theoretically difficult topic in a way that is simple and intuitive and will whet the students appetite for further study. Additional suggestions are welcome. -- Dave

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and they're off!... (race track)
by kirby urner 31 Jan '09

31 Jan '09

Yikes, in last place now. This horse hasn't left the gate yet. Shoulda rented that blimp maybe. Holden's other one, same day, is filling fast, not surprising (might be where I go). Kirby Thursday Classes Python 401: Some Advanced Topics (Holden): 10 py.test - rapid testing with minimal effort (Dorsey/Krekel): 4 ToscaWidgets: Test Driven Modular Ajax (Perkins): 1 Introduction to SQLAlchemy (Ellis): 10 Hands on with Trac Plugins (Kantrowitz): 1 Data Storage in Python - An Overview of Options (Muller): 5 Python 101 (Williams): 4 Scrape the Web: Strategies for programming websites that don't expect it (Laroia): 2 Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming (Goldwater) 4 py.Test cross-platform and distributed Testing (Krekel/Dorsey) 2 Python for Teachers (Urner/Holden) 0 Advanced SQLAlchemy (Kirtland/Bayer) 12 Using the repoze.bfg Web Framework (McDonough/Perkins) 1 A Tour of the Python Standard Library (Kumaran) 4 Python 102 (Williams) 4 Internet Programming with Python (Chun) 9

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Welcome news from UK (more Pycon promo)
by kirby urner 30 Jan '09

30 Jan '09

I'm glad our UK math guy in residence, Sociality's Ian Benson, is planning to attend Pycon, just got his booking. We've been looking at interconnected computer science concepts and their applications in early mathematics education, namely: disambiguation (per Wikipedia, but a general concept), name collisions, namespaces. The first two are quasi-synonymous while the latter is our solution, a honkin' great feature of Python, while also the purpose of addressing more generally, URIs in particular. The Java world took the URI for the code's residence or source and turned that around ala net.4dsolutions.ocn.mathobjects, a kind of package name. That's actually harder to parse than simple "dot notation" though, where we just go: Apple.Safari Jungle.Safari OReilly.Safari Here students understand, from their own experience, how we disambiguate three meanings of Safari using "dot notation", with the prefix, like in Java, like in Python, having to do with "the source" (we hope open) or, more philosophically, "context" or "namespace"). I think a barrier to using dot notation in philosophical literature is authors have worried about all those periods interrupting the flow, i.e. how will our prose be uglified if we start going like Coxeter.4D to disambiguate from Fuller.4D, a name collision it's important to resolve, if you're going to anywhere with your Princeton philosophy courses. However, philosophy has the precedent of embedding lots of logic, going back to Bertrand Russell, Whitehead and before, continuing forward, attempting, some might surmise, to realize the Leibniz dream of machine executable codes. But no, those have already occurred, in computer science, but apparently workaday operational logic like Python, in charge of baggage carousels, air traffic control (small Siberian airport, nothing major), isn't "good enough" to merit much Ivory Tower attention. Leibniz can go blow, seems to be the prevailing attitude. However, the Wittgensteinians, with their blah blah about "language games", had the namespace idea already going. And a namespace is not just a dictionary, even though it's possible to treat one that way, as in O.__dict__. On the contrary, a namespace is more an ecology, something intricate. You may wonder how all this figures in to 'Python for Teachers', and you're right to wonder. There's a specific slide where I go: Fuller.4D Coxeter.4D Einstein.4D and then explain how the last two are disambiguated on page 119 of 'Regular Polytopes' (by Coxeter), whereas the first is presaged in the writings of Karl Menger, dimension theorist, and carries forward into our own time through a small bevy or writers. We have disambiguation problems galore, given popular ignorance of the whole idea of namespace. They give lip service to "context" but don't get its nuts and bolts importance in the Leibniz logics of our day. For example, the Wikipedia entry for Synergetics is mostly about some Springer-Verlag thing, not our American Transcendentalist writings. That's not really a problem, given how Wikipedia deals with this problem, is more just another good example, something to use in the classroom, when explaining the basics to philosophy students. Anyway, Ian keeps a lot of mathematicians in the loop besides just himself, isn't called Mr. Sociality for nothing. Kirby PS: I jumped in on Chipy on some Pyro vs. XML-RPC thread, mentioning my friend Patrick, a possible TA at our workshop (works for Synovate, Chicago-based).

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Python compared...
by kirby urner 29 Jan '09

29 Jan '09

Kinda funny I thought, from the Chipy list. ( my apologies for cross-posting instead of just giving a link -- have my reasons... ) === from Clyde Forrester <ccf3(a)mindspring.com> to The Chicago Python Users Group <chicago(a)python.org> date Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 9:38 PM As promised here is a list of the languages which were or were not compared with Python at the last meeting: Languages covered: C Logo Smalltalk Groovy Java Ruby JavaScript Boo C/C++ Lua Clojure C# In addition, while not scheduled originally, Scheme was covered tcl/tk was scheduled, but not covered The following languages were not covered, and many of them were mentioned: Perl Fortran Cobol Pascal Lisp Forth PHP Whitespace Brainfuck Lolcats Visual Basic Modula Erlang SQL Snobol Awk Business Basic Focal IITran Spantran APL Assembler _______________________________________________ Chicago mailing list Chicago(a)python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/chicago

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Re: [Edu-sig] PyBat ???
by David MacQuigg 29 Jan '09

29 Jan '09

Thanks to all for the suggestions. At 02:13 PM 1/27/2009 -0800, kirby urner wrote: >Does it have to be either/or? > >I'm somewhat weak in the PHP department but only by choice, know I >could learn it pronto from Safari, as the concepts are pretty much the >same. >... > >But is your department smallish, no room in the inn for more than one language? > >Our Reed College in Portland has an ad in the paper for web framework >developer, asking for PHP, Python and Ruby savvy. That seems like a >good mix. Why not push that? The goal is to teach fundamentals, not specific languages or applications. Our community college has a course in PHP (also Word, Excel, etc.) Also, as you point out, students can learn these pronto from Safari, once they understand the concepts. U of A freshmen currently have two choices - Java or C. Python is pretty close to Java, and I'm assuming much easier to use for website development (not familiar with what's available in Java, just an extrapolation from other projects comparing Java and Python). I know PHP is very popular in website development, but I've heard it is insecure, so I would worry about using it to run student code on a webserver. On a personal level, I probably won't be involved if the decision is PHP. I just can't see learning a whole new language for one project. Now if someone were to convince me that PHP, Ruby, or whatever, had some fundamental advantage over Python, I might change my mind. At 06:27 PM 1/27/2009 -0400, Andre Roberge wrote: >Have a look at Crunchy (http://code.google.com/p/crunchy) and in >particular the doctest capability. It does not (yet) have the ability >to add student scores but that could be added; otherwise, I believe it >would have what you need. Nice Python tutorial! What I need, however is something like a framework that can be used for other topics, not just Python. I see from page one of your tutorial that you have the same security concern as I do about running student code, and possibly crashing the University webserver. Maybe what we need is a private server, or at least a VPS, so a crash wouldn't affect anyone but this group of students. I guess I'll look into some of the "full-stack" frameworks at http://wiki.python.org/moin/WebFrameworks. -- Dave >On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 1:57 PM, David MacQuigg ><macquigg(a)ece.arizona.edu> wrote: >> The CS Dept is considering putting a bunch of courses online, using PHP as both the development language, and as a new language to teach students. I've suggested using Python instead. I need to put together a quick demo. I'm thinking of something like javabat.com. >> >> I've used Mod_python (the Apache/Python integration), but I'm not yet proficient. Now is the time to change course, if there is a better path. >> >> Students will be entering Python code snippets into a window, and we need to run the code on a bunch of test cases, giving immediate feedback on errors, and accumulating the students' scores and work-in-progress. Running user code is a bit more of a challenge than running our code on user data, but javabat has inspired me. >> >> Any recommendations? >> >> -- Dave

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promoting Python for Teachers
by kirby urner 28 Jan '09

28 Jan '09

I'm reminded by Pycon admin to promote our 'Python for Teachers' (somewhat of a community effort given I'm promoting the archive as a sleeper goldmine of great resources). So far zero booked, but we're just out of the gate here. Remember to invite your friends. :) Kirby Hands-on Python I: 3 Hands-on Python II: 4 Faster Python Programs through Optimization: 6 Application Development with IronPython: 2 Using Twisted Deferreds: 0 Beginning TurboGears: 1 Introduction to the Google App Engine: 4 Easy Concurrency with Kamaelia: 0 Working with Excel Files in Python: 3 Django in the Real World: 6 Eggs and Buildout Development: 2 Geographic Information Systems in Python: 1 Intermediate TurboGears: 1 A Curious Course on Coroutines and Concurrency: 6 Building Real-Time Network Apps with Twisted and Orbiter: 0 Introduction to Functional Web Testing With Twill and Selenium: 2 Python 401: Some Advanced Topics: 8 py.Test I: rapid testing with minimal effort: 2 py.Test II: cross-platform: 1 ToscaWidgets: Test Driven Modular Ajax: 0 Introduction to SQLAlchemy: 7 Advanced SQLAlchemy: 7 Hands on with Trac Plugins: 0 Data Storage in Python: 3 Python 101: 3 Python 102: 3 Scrape the Web: 1 Introduction to OOP: 1 Python for Teachers: 0 <--------------------- if you use Python, you're one of its teachers, ready or not! Using repoze.bfg Web Framework: 1 A Tour of the Python Standard Library: 3 Internet Programming with Python: 7

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Conway's Game Of Life in APL
by Daniel Ajoy 28 Jan '09

28 Jan '09

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4&feature=channel_page Daniel

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PyBat ???
by David MacQuigg 27 Jan '09

27 Jan '09

The CS Dept is considering putting a bunch of courses online, using PHP as both the development language, and as a new language to teach students. I've suggested using Python instead. I need to put together a quick demo. I'm thinking of something like javabat.com. I've used Mod_python (the Apache/Python integration), but I'm not yet proficient. Now is the time to change course, if there is a better path. Students will be entering Python code snippets into a window, and we need to run the code on a bunch of test cases, giving immediate feedback on errors, and accumulating the students' scores and work-in-progress. Running user code is a bit more of a challenge than running our code on user data, but javabat has inspired me. Any recommendations? -- Dave ************************************************************ * * David MacQuigg, PhD email: macquigg at ece.arizona.edu * * * Research Associate phone: USA 520-721-4583 * * * * ECE Department, University of Arizona * * * * 9320 East Mikelyn Lane * * * * http://purl.net/macquigg Tucson, Arizona 85710 * ************************************************************ *

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"engineer" image (updating)
by kirby urner 27 Jan '09

27 Jan '09

The more I look at it, the more I'm thinking peoples' stereotype of "engineers" is what's keeping 'em from wanting to tackle any of this "programming" stuff. They think of "an engineer" as someone "cold" who lives in a florescently lit windowless basement, a stereotype, but still pretty vivid (I've been there many times). We look at this at Wanderers (Linus Pauling House group), a lot of us engineers by training, got some good insights from Dr. William Wulf, who spoke directly to bridging the "digital divide" between the "two cultures": http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2005/04/last-isepp-lecture-2005.html Bouncing off David MacQuigg's spiel (which I liked) about OO being over-hyped within the industry, there's that whole problem of "objectifying" which we're told is callous (part of the problem), as when we "see people as objects". And that's exactly what we do, let's be honest, when writing OO code atop SQL tables, bringing all those pieces together to give us a "sim" (a model human) with a person.creditcard and a person.bankaccount who lives at person.address. What I continue to stress is that we ("we engineers") see *ourselves* that way too i.e. this isn't about being aloof and above it all, looking down on miserable animals that aren't us, as if we had gods' eye views. No, we're those patients in those beds, those people on the roller coaster, those people with shopping carts, on airplanes. We're not misanthropists. We're philanthropists (like Bill Gates, Mark Shuttleworth...). This is a lot the same ethic in open source too: no, it's not "cheap" what we're making, we're not "cutting corners", because we're designing this *for us* (not snookering some customer, not trying to pull a fast one). Of course some people *do* get away with shoddy work, but the point I'm making is engineers have plenty of incentive to do a great job, because hey, we're gonna live with the consequences, with the tools we create (or fail to create). If no one builds bridges, there won't be any, pretty simple. When I go into all this stuff about stressing "self" in Python (see archive), maybe replacing "self" with "me" just for fun, or with some Chinese character, if only as an exercise, I'm not trying to insinuate some esoteric belief system or cult religion about selfhood. I'm just wanting it to be OK to have empathy for the things we're programming about, just as any writer gets to feel for those characters, even the fictional ones. It's not "stupidly anthropomorphic" to imagine oneself as an airport or dam, any more than to imagine oneself working inside same. Bringing your kinesthetic sensibilities into play is a basis for sound civil engineering, doesn't get you off the hook from learning those formulas, but hey, don't forget what a bridge "feels like" in high winds, get it that into your bones some, like a sailor (a survival skill, we don't have all those neurons just fer nuthin' ya know). This is admittedly a lot about marketing and PR, where my head's at these days, what with OS Bridge coming up, Pycon in Chicago. I signed on to Chipy by the way, sent 'em a heads up, per this blog post: http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2009/01/more-school-business.html Kirby

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