[Edu-sig] Proposing / defending Python in a curriculum

David Binger binger@centre.edu
Fri, 26 Jan 2001 14:29:15 -0500


Hi Python Educators,

At Centre College, we made a change like this last fall.
Our introductory course now uses python and subsequent
courses will use java and/or python as seems appropriate.
The main motivation for this change was to give more
students more programming power earlier.  When we taught
C++ in the introductory course, I don't think nonmajors were
going out and writing programs for themselves.
With python, we  think we are producing more students that enjoy
programming more and feel more confident.

Next fall, we will see how a class of python-trained programmers
adapts to a data structures course that includes instruction in
java.  I hope and expect that that transition will be fairly smooth,
but we won't know until we try it.

As for the issue of a non-mainstream language, I think
majors that know java (or C++) and python will not go hungry.
I am sure that students with one course in python will be
more powerful programmers than those with one course in
C++.

In my course, we used the VPython distribution, and the
students had a blast creating little animated 3D scenes.

David Binger
Associate Professor of Computer Science
Centre College
Danville, Kentucky

P.S. - I've used scheme in an introductory course before.
Python is similarly easy for students, but they seem to
appreciate it more.

There is a new book, "Learn to Program Using Python,"
by Alan Gauld that might be useful as a text.  I haven't
seen it yet.  All other books that I have seen seem to
me to target a more sophisticated audience than I can
expect in our introductory course.

http://binger.centre.edu/classes/f00/cs17/syllabus.html