[Edu-sig] Programming Exercises

[Winston Wolff]

I just purchased the book "Python Programming" by Michael Dawson.  I  
like it very much for teaching absolute beginners Python, and I have  
borrowed a bunch of his examples.  All the examples revolve around  
games, from simple text based games to later graphics games with  
TKInter and PyGame/Livewire.  If your students have a little  
experience in another language, this might be good.

-winston


On May 26, 2005, at 1:10 PM, Scott David Daniels wrote:

> Chuck Allison wrote:
>
>> Hello Scott,
>>
>> Thursday, May 26, 2005, 1:55:15 AM, you wrote:
>>
>> SDD> Chuck Allison wrote:
>>
>>
>>>> Hello edu-sig,
>>>>
>>>>  Does anyone know of a good source of programming exercises/ 
>>>> projects
>>>>  to use when teaching Python to people who already know another
>>>>  language? Solutions don't need to be available - I just need some
>>>>  good sample programming assignments. Thanks.
>>>>
>>>>
>>
>> SDD> You need to tell us what yu are interested in / would like to  
>> do.
>> SDD> Do you want to find eigenvectors? Do you want to do GUI  
>> work? ....
>>
>> Good question. Mostly I need general assignments (using sequences,
>> mappings, text processing, basic OO, launching processes for testing,
>> etc.), but also simple mail apps and basic COM (like processing
>> Microsoft Word docs). No higher math. Some basic GUI ones would be
>> nice too (will be using wxPython). Thanks!
>>
>>
>>
> First, do the Python tutorial if you have not.  Try following Dive
> Into Python if it meets your tastes.
>
> For text processing:
>
> Create or obtain a couple of plain ASCII texts.  One should be short
> for testing and development, and another long for fun and production.
> Look to  Project Gutenberg if you don't have anything long yourself.
> Make a concordance (words to position) that you can save and restore
> w/o re-counting your text.   Find the N (50 for big) most frequent
> words used.
>
> Once you have all that working, figure out how to show all instances
> of a selected word "in context".  For extra credit, words, sorted by
> frequency or alphabetically (button selectable) presented on a wx
> window that show your "word in context" when clicking on a word.
>
> That should hold you for a day or two.
>
> ---
>
> My bias is to go test-forward, so (if you want to try that) here is
> a start (a first test to pass).  Most of this is boilerplate, look at
> the body of test_words to see the only actual test here.  Create a
> test_wordy.py file as so:
>
>      import unittest
>      from StringIO import StringIO
>      import wordy    # the module you are actually testing
>
>      class TestWords(unittest.TestCase):
>          def test_words(self):
>              source = StringIO("a test")
>              self.assertEqual(['a', 'test'], list(wordy.aswords 
> (source)))
>
>      if __name__ == '__main__':
>          unittest.main()
>
> Now, when you run python on this file you will get a failure.  The  
> first
> one is that wordy.py doesn't exist.  Keep fixing until your test  
> passes.
> Then add tests for new behavior, watch them fail, and fix the source
> until it works.
>
> --Scott David Daniels
> Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org
>
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