[Edu-sig] Alice update

[Kirby Urner]

At 03:48 PM 2/15/2003 -0500, Arthur wrote:

>Other than using some Jython ministerially in the infrastructure.

"Ministerially" (?) -- is this radically different than "for scripting,"
which was how Python was used in earlier versions.

What I read is:

* Scripting in Alice is done with the Python scripting language so you may
   want to read the Pyhton Tutorial. [sic -- their typo not mine]

and

* With Jython, the Java version of Python, you can access all the Java
classes from Python. This mean you can use anything from the Java API
or the Alice2 API.

http://www.alice.org/bvw02fall/scripting/scripting.html

I agree with you insofar as this is not a "pure Python" environment.
It's a different approach to learning programming, certainly.

>Which, to me, is neither surprising, nor a bad thing.
>
>But I do hope the Python in education materials, links and references are
>eventually updated to reflect the fact that Alice has no relevance to
>Python.

I think "no relevance" might be too strong, but I'll have to download
the new Alice and give it a test drive, like I did for the older one,
back when they hired me to work on that 'How To Program' thing (one of
the Python books).

Possibly the Alice link should be moved to a new Jython section of
the Python edu-sig links page.

Kirby