[Edu-sig] Beginner programs?

[Urban Anjar]

Ryan Booz wrote:
 
> Now I'm getting to the point of trying to come up with problems
> (programs) that are challenging for the students but let them use the
> tools they have thus far.  I'm mostly following the introduction scheme
> of "How to think like a computer programmer - Python version".  I saw
> that a while back there was some thought of collecting a group of
> exercises for class use.  My first thought, since we just got finished
> with functions and logic statements, was to work on a basic calculator
> and then maybe a hangman kind of game.
> 

Have a look at http://www.bom.hik.se/~nanur/glospgm/ it is a "kit" for
beginning to make a program for studying words in a foreign language.

The text is in swedish (sorry) but the code should be understandable???

The exemples tries to teach a stepwise refinement way of designing a
program. It begins with a very short but somhow working piece of code.
More features are added in the later versions.

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Games could be an interesting field too, try Nim or Tic-tac-toe too Or
a simple version of the classic Adventure-game.

In biology you could try to simulate some simple population dynamics?

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Reading code and trying to improve it (or get rid of some bugs you
easily
can plant) is another good idea. Is there any place where one can find
small, more or less trivial (but well coded) Python programs for that
purpouse?

Urban