[Edu-sig] Re: Edu-sig Digest, Vol 22, Issue 1

[Toby Donaldson]

Hi,

You are welcome to look at --- any use or modify any of the materials 
--- from our course website for the initial offering at Surrey of the 
Python-based CMPT 120: 
http://sweetness.typepad.com/cmpt_120_sfu_surrey_fall2/

Highlights include:

  - three different sets of instructor notes
  - a set of weekly programming labs
  - two sample midterm exams (with solutions)
  - two sample final exams (with solutions)
  - as glossary of terms (generated via a Python script): 
http://sweetness.typepad.com/cmpt_120_sfu_surrey_fall2/files/glossary.html
  - some vocabulary crossword in the form of interactive Java applets: 
http://sweetness.typepad.com/cmpt_120_sfu_surrey_fall2/puzzles/index.html

This course didn't cover any object-oriented programming.

Two comments on your FAQ:

  - "yield" does not quite give you the full power of continuations, and 
so anyone who expects that will be disappointed (or relieved, depending 
upon your attitude and experience with them!).
   - I would think that if you end up using Python and require that all 
function arguments be explicitly type-checked, then it might not be the 
best choice of language. Yes, you *can* do a lot of type-checking with 
assert, but that quickly lays waste to any claims of Python being "low 
overhead".

Toby

>Message: 1
>Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 12:01:53 -0400
>From: "Douglas S. Blank" <dblank at brynmawr.edu>
>Subject: [Edu-sig] Python for CS101
>To: edu-sig at python.org
>Message-ID: <4273ABF1.3050506 at brynmawr.edu>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
>
>Edu-sig members,
>
>I am proposing that we move our intro courses at Bryn Mawr College to 
>Python. Although I have been using Python for a few years, and have
>used it in the upper-level courses for teaching robotics, I haven't
>taught an intro course with it.
>
>I am now responding to my colleagues' questions. If you have useful 
>comments, or if you have questions too, please feel free to add them here:
>
>http://emergent.brynmawr.edu/emergent/PythonForCS
>
>or send them to me (or post them here). I hope when this process is 
>complete, this data will be useful for others ready to make the plunge.
>
>Thanks for any feedback,
>
>-Doug
>  
>