On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 10:36 PM, Rustom Mody
If you think the separation of these two worlds is unnecessary then you have the mess of C's 'expressions' like ++ And you will have students puzzling over the wonders of nature like i = i++ whereas the most useful answer would be "Syntax Error"
A good reason NOT to teach C as a first language ;-)
And finally all this is rather OT. I am talking of a framework for a teacher to chart a course through python, not any changes per se to python itself.
I would argue that you are actually not talking about teaching Python, per se -- but using a (subset) of python to teach programming in the more general sense. If you want to teach Python, then I think it is a mistake to teach a truncated version first -- it will just lead to confusion later. But having a "functional" version of Python for teaching functional programming concepts makes some sense. Though I think one woulc create that as a monkey=patched version of python wihtout hacing into the core pyton implimentaiton: i.e. replace map(), etc, with versions that return tuples, rather than lists, that kind of thing. though maybe replacing list comprehensions with tuple comprehensions would be a bit tricky... Though I'm still not sure you'd need to -- sure you CAN mutate a list, but if you use functional approaches, lists won't get mutated -- so where is the source of the confusion? -Chris -- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer Emergency Response Division NOAA/NOS/OR&R (206) 526-6959 voice 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception Chris.Barker@noaa.gov