Mailman 3 November 2015 - Edu-sig

a short essay about programming
by kirby urner Dec. 8, 2022

Dec. 8, 2022

A common "error" (not too serious) that I see in beginning Python (and no doubt other languages, but Python is the one I'm teaching), is having a while condition that appears to put a lid on things, but then the flow all leaks away through break statements, such that the "front door" condition is never revisited. while guess != secret: guess = int(input("Guess?: ") if guess == secret: print("You guessed it!") break else: print("Nope, try again...") What's messed up about the above code is you never really go back to the top in the case where you'd get to leave. Rather, you exit by the back door, through break. So in that case, wouldn't have been simpler and more elegant, even more "correct" (dare I say it) to have gone: while True: # no ifs ands or buts guess = int(input("Guess?: ") if guess == secret: print("You guessed it!") break else: print("Nope, try again...") I see lots of heads nodding, and that could be the end of the matter, but then a next question arises: wouldn't this also be a more correct solution?: while guess != secret: guess = int(input("Guess?: ") if guess == secret: print("You guessed it!") continue # instead of break else: print("Nope, try again...") We're back to having a variable while condition, not a boolean constant, but this time we actually exit by means of it, thanks to continue or... while guess != secret: guess = int(input("Guess?: ") if guess == secret: print("You guessed it!") else: print("Nope, try again...") ... thanks to no continue. This last one is getting a thumbs up, but then I'd pause here and say "continue" can be easier on the eyes. It's unambiguous where it takes you, in contrast to having to scan on down the gauntlet, looking for possibly other open doors. "What happens next" should not require scanning ahead too far. Help us not to get lost. Be a civic-minded coder. I'm thinking of a programming style that advises two things: (a) if you use a while condition that's variable, that's expected to change, then your goal should be to always exit because of that, i.e. that should be your only exit point. Even if some other criterion suggests exiting, you have the option to flip that "lid" at the top, to crack that front door, and bounce the ball out. (b) which is why 'continue' is your friend. You are showing the user where your 'break' statements are, except you don't use "break" statements, as you've given a non-constant condition, and your aim is to make that your ONLY exit point. In short: never use break to exit a while loop unless your condition is while True. Instead, always flip the condition and exit through the font door. However, as soon as I make that rule I can think of good reasons to break it. The other programmers in the room are shaking their heads. Won't we lose information, needed elsewhere in the program, if we "artificially" force a True condition to False. Aren't we, in effect, lying? That concern could be addressed. Keep all the info true, just treat the "lid condition" (it "keeps a lid on it") as a flag. Go ahead and remember the user's guess. allowed = 5 tries = 1 exit = False while not exit: # no other way out guess = int(input("Guess?: ") if guess == secret: print("You guessed it!") exit = True # instead of break continue print("Nope, try again...") tries += 1 if tries == allowed: print("You've maxed out") exit = True continue I think we all understand the main issue: writing reader-friendly code, and rules for doing so. There's something comforting about approaching a while loop and knowing its not a leaky sieve, riddled with back doors, maybe even an exit( ) time bomb. But in the recursion world we want a minimum of two exits usually: when another round is called for versus when we've "hit bottom". Can we have it both ways? Conclusions: Lets not be too hasty with rules of thumb and: Lets keep the reader in mind when writing code. Just because the interpreter knows to compute the flow unambiguously, doesn't mean all ways of writing it are equally reader-friendly. What may seem a gratuitous gesture, an unnecessary flourish, may actually promote reader comprehension of your code, and that should be a goal as much as satisfying the interpreter. Kirby

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turtle coordinates: Y increase downards - as in most graphics API?
by Jurgis Pralgauskis July 2, 2018

July 2, 2018

Hi, usually in computer graphics Y is counted to increase downwards. I casn do it with: setworldcoordinates(0, 400, 600, 0) but then, "right(..)" turns to the left :/ I could swap: right, left = left, right but on errror I get a bit misleading message >>> right() Traceback (most recent call last): File "<pyshell#10>", line 1, in <module> right() TypeError: left() takes exactly 1 argument (0 given) I thought to make this hack for kids, so better clearer error msgs... Any Ideas? Thanks :) -- Jurgis Pralgauskis tel: 8-616 77613; Don't worry, be happy and make things better ;) http://galvosukykla.lt

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Re: [Edu-sig] Edu-sig Digest, Vol 148, Issue 7
by Marianne McKenna Nov. 29, 2015

Nov. 29, 2015

I am away from the office . I will try to respond by email. If you need immediate help, please contact tech support. Thanks!

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Google teaches Python 2.x, not 3.x?
by kirby urner Nov. 28, 2015

Nov. 28, 2015

https://developers.google.com/edu/python/set-up I'd hope for something more up to date. I was following Python links from here: https://github.com/WomenWhoCode/guidelines-resources/blob/master/learn_to_p… Kirby

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Re: [Edu-sig] Edu-sig Digest, Vol 148, Issue 5
by Marianne McKenna Nov. 27, 2015

Nov. 27, 2015

I am away from the office . I will try to respond by email. If you need immediate help, please contact tech support. Thanks!

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Re: [Edu-sig] Edu-sig Digest, Vol 148, Issue 4
by Marianne McKenna Nov. 25, 2015

Nov. 25, 2015

I am away from the office . I will try to respond by email. If you need immediate help, please contact tech support. Thanks!

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Re: [Edu-sig] Edu-sig Digest, Vol 148, Issue 3
by Marianne McKenna Nov. 24, 2015

Nov. 24, 2015

I am away from the office . I will try to respond by email. If you need immediate help, please contact tech support. Thanks!

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Permutations with Python
by kirby urner Nov. 23, 2015

Nov. 23, 2015

My long history on this edu-sig listserv @ python.org has included an agenda around STEM reform. I've wanted to change US K-16 by displacing math track scientific calculators with true REPLs, then altering the math content based on the new freedom a REPL provides. Using the I-Python REPL: In [129]: from px_class import * In [130]: p = P(range(10)).shuffle() In [131]: p Out[131]: P class: ((0, 6), (1, 4), (2, 0))... In [132]: p._code Out[132]: {0: 6, 1: 4, 2: 0, 3: 3, 4: 8, 5: 9, 6: 1, 7: 5, 8: 2, 9: 7} In [133]: p.cyclic() Out[133]: ((0, 6, 1, 4, 8, 2), (3,), (5, 9, 7)) My __repr__ for the P class actually uses ... i.e. this is unedited output. The idea of a Permutation (P) is very primitive: a mapping of elements to themselves i.e. a dict where keys and values are the same elements, but with values in any order. The identity permutation maps every element to itself. p= P() starts out with the identity permutation, but then any p instance has a .shuffle method to return a new instance with a permuted version of the original dict. p = P().shuffle() creates a random instance in one step. By default, my Permutations use the lowercase alphabet plus space, to form a 27-element self._code (the dict). The encrypt and decrypt methods may be fed ordinary strings of lowercase letters. From: p = P().shuffle() s = "able was i ere i saw elba" c = p(s) print("Plain: ", s) print("Cipher: ", c) try: assert p.decrypt(c) == s print("Third Test Succeeds") except AssertionError: print("Third Test Fails") comes the output: Plain: able was i ere i saw elba Cipher: fp vnufcnlnvjvnlncfunv pf Third Test Succeeds I think it's an economic reality the curriculum publishers do not want to compete with their own products. Computer science in high school has, historically speaking, been a back-of-the-bus second-class citizen, earning only "elective credit" for its course takers, if there's more than a "computer club" (i.e. if the content is not extra-curricular), plus a chance to pass the AP test. That made sense until the languages got so friendly and easy to use. Now that we're redoing the mathematics track itself, in light of these changes in technology, we have an opportunity to bring in new topics such as Group Theory and Euclid's Algorithm (EA) for the greatest common divisor (GCD). With GCD in the picture, we're ready for relative primality and therefore concepts of totative / totient. I've harped on these topics before. They're simple and accessible, pre-college, not much background required. Unless one grasps the concept of Group, there's no getting Field, with Group, Ring and Field being fundamental algebraic structures. There's no arguing these concepts are irrelevant, even in K-12. Permutations may be multiplied (the operation), plus each has an inverse, defined as the key->value mapping that goes the other way i.e. the dict is inverted. How does one invert a dictionary in Python code? Good exercise, so again we're not just earning math credit, we're improving our Python skills. The properties of a Group are sometimes given as 'CAIN': *(C)* Closure: p = P().shuffle(); q = P().shuffle(); p * q is always another P. *(A)* Associativity: (p * q) * r == p * (q * r) for all Permutations p, q, r *(I)* Inverse: every p = P().shuffle() has an inverse such that p * ~p == p ** 0 *(N)* Neutral element: every group has an Identity element with respect to its operation (*) such that p * P() == P() * p == p. I'm currently teaching a course in Python for the State of California. My adult students join me in real time for 10 four hour segments. I've just completed my fourth. We're coding classes (types) already, were looking at simple class constructs from Day One. I've suggested they adopt the mindset of a future high school student, privileged to have a real REPL. Last night, for a lab, I had the class tackle adding __pow__ to the P class, given I'd already implemented __mul__. Playing with a Permutation class is just a tiny fraction of all we do. I spiral back to it in each session as I introduce new Python features. Today, I added more methods to the Permutation so I can simply lecture on them tomorrow evening and invite downloading and reuse. Here's the source code as of now, pretty well tested: # -*- coding: utf-8 -*- """ Created on Tue Nov 10 17:39:09 2015 @author: Kirby Urner (c) MIT License (fine to reuse / alter / share) Fun for Group Theory + Python """ from random import shuffle from string import ascii_lowercase # all lowercase letters class P: """ A Permutation self._code: a dict, is a mapping of iterable elements to themselves in any order. """ def __init__(self, iterable = ascii_lowercase + ' '): """ start out with Identity """ self._code = dict(zip(iterable, iterable)) def shuffle(self): """ return a random permutation of this permutation """ # use shuffle # something like the_keys = list(self._code.keys()) # grab keys shuffle(the_keys) # shuffles newP = P() newP._code = dict(zip(self._code.keys(), the_keys)) return newP def encrypt(self, plain): """ turn plaintext into cyphertext using self._code """ output = "" # empty string for c in plain: output = output + self._code.get(c, c) return output def decrypt(self, cypher): """ Turn cyphertext into plaintext using ~self """ reverse_P = ~self # invert me! output = "" for c in cypher: output = output + reverse_P._code.get(c, c) return output def __getitem__(self, key): return self._code.get(key, None) def __repr__(self): return "P class: " + str(tuple(self._code.items())[:3]) + "..." def cyclic(self): """ cyclic notation, a compact view of a group """ output = [] the_dict = self._code.copy() while the_dict: start = tuple(the_dict.keys())[0] the_cycle = [start] the_next = the_dict.pop(start) while the_next != start: the_cycle.append(the_next) the_next = the_dict.pop(the_next) output.append(tuple(the_cycle)) return tuple(output) def __mul__(self, other): """ look up my keys to get values that serve as keys to get others "target" values """ new_code = {} for c in self._code: # going through my keys target = other._code[ self._code[c] ] new_code[c] = target new_P = P(' ') new_P._code = new_code return new_P def __pow__(self, exp): """ multiply self * self the right number of times """ if exp == 0: output = P() else: output = self for x in range(1, abs(exp)): output *= self if exp < 0: output = ~output return output def __call__(self, s): """ another way to encrypt """ return self.encrypt(s) def __invert__(self): """ create new P with reversed dict """ newP = P(' ') newP._code = dict(zip(self._code.values(), self._code.keys())) return newP def __eq__(self, other): """ are these permutation the same? Yes if self._code == other._code """ return self._code == other._code if __name__ == "__main__": p = P() # identity permutation new_p = p.shuffle() inv_p = ~new_p try: assert p == inv_p * new_p # should be True print("First Test Succeeds") except AssertionError: print("First Test Fails") #========== p = P().shuffle() try: assert p ** -1 == ~p assert p ** -2 == ~(p * p) assert p ** -2 == (~p * ~p) print("Second Test Succeeds") except AssertionError: print("Second Test Fails") #========== p = P().shuffle() s = "able was i ere i saw elba" c = p(s) print("Plain: ", s) print("Cipher: ", c) try: assert p.decrypt(c) == s print("Third Test Succeeds") except AssertionError: print("Third Test Fails")

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