[BangPypers] python for management studies

[Venkatraman S]

On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 12:47 PM, Noufal Ibrahim <noufal at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 12:32 PM, Venkatraman S <venkat83 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I would recommend starting with http://alpha.djangogenerator.com/ to get
> a
> > feel of an 'application'.
>
> It might be just me but I think this is an *extremely* bad idea.
>
> I just tried the site and it looks like a nice point and click wizard
> to create an "application template"  which people can customise into
> an application.
>
> The world has enough people who consider programming mostly a matter
> of point and click who don't know what's going on. I would be
> completely against using any of these tools for an introductory
> programming course. I'd teach language basics, the standard library
> (like Senthil pointed out) so that they don't reinvent the wheel
> poorly and then have them solve *hard* problems which are relevant to
> their area of work. Getting an application up and running with a few
> clicks of a mouse has the same effect as eating junk food. Your
> appetite goes away, you can claim that you've eaten something but
> there's close to zero nourishment.
>

The point is  : the audience is MBA students. And i have had experience
coaching around 40+students who had ZERO experience with programing and
taught them Python.
They were HIGHLY skeptical to program. I had to really motivate them a lot
to get them onto Python. I partly succeeded. Now the entire org, which was
using Java, runs on Python.

Do NOT expect MBA grads to *program* - they are decision makers, they need
language as a *tool* to augment their daily work - hence Macros. I can
include some verbiage here reg the MBA mentality in India et al. but thats
cliched!

DjangoGenerator is cool to understand what an 'application'-'relation' looks
like. I have been using this to get 2 persons to understand the concept of a
'web application'. This tool is not a 'pseudo' programmer.

Will you stop using Pinax for the same reasons?

-V