[BangPypers] python for management studies

[Noufal Ibrahim]

On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 10:49 PM, Kenneth Gonsalves <lawgon at au-kbc.org> wrote:
>
> hi,
>
> I have been commissioned to create and implement a course (compulsory with 2
> credits for first semester) on computer programming for business managers for
> MBA's in a new B school that is starting up. I envisage something like the
> nltk tutorial. Ideas and suggestions please. I will, of course, develop the
> course in a mercurial repo, but that is the future. The idea is that this
> should become a standard cp-101 for business schools.

What's the intention of the course? The structure of the course would
depend on that methinks. Is it to
 - Give the students some programming skills so that they can use them
if needed for their actual work.
 - Appreciate the finer subtleties of what goes on during programming
so that they can become better managers/decision makers.

The latter would be considerably harder and it wouldn't really be CP-101.

For the former, I think a basic language introduction (say 1/4th of
the course) followed by intense exercise driven training on 'useful'
things would be nice. Similar to Zed Shaw's  "Learn Python the hard
way" (http://learnpythonthehardway.org/). The exercises should be
complex enough to force the people to make some design decisions so
that they learn to "program". Too often, fibonacci number programs are
considered good examples and that totally cripples someone trying to
study the language.


--
~noufal
http://nibrahim.net.in