[Edu-sig] Python as a first language for computer sciencist

[Rodrigo Senra]

[ Brad Miller ]
>
> I'm curious to hear from others that use Python for introductory
> computer science.  How often do these 'semantic bugs'  crop up for
> your students?

Brad,
at the time I was teaching undergraduate courses that was not an issue,
mainly because Python has such wonderful debugging tools: interactive
console, dir()/type(), pdb. What I did was to play with them  
exploring Python' s
reflective tools, so they could learn early on how _survive_  by  
themselves.

But I always gave strong emphasis on Python scoping rules, that might  
have
helped to avoid that particular issue. Or maybe they stumbled in it,  
and never
let me know ;o)

best regards,
Senra

Rodrigo Senra
______________
rsenra @ acm.org
http://rodrigo.senra.nom.br