[Edu-sig] Textbooks

[gerry_lowry{905~825'9582}abilityBusinessComputerServices]

You may want to teach J first, in addition, or instead.  http://www.jsoftware.com/

Also FREE.    J is the creation of Turing Award winner Ken Iverson and his colleague Roger Hui.

"J is a modern, high-level, general-purpose, high-performance programming language. J is portable and runs on Windows, Unix, Mac, 
and PocketPC handhelds, both as a GUI and in a console. True 64-bit J systems are available for XP64 or Linux64, on AMD64 or Intel 
EM64T platforms. J systems can be installed and distributed for free."

Examples:

5 + 5
10

   ADD =. +

   5 ADD 5
10

   +/ 3 4 5 8 12 45
77

   ADDtheseNumbers =. +/

   ADDtheseNumbers  3 4 5 8 12 45
77

 2 + 5 6 7
7 8 9

   i. 6
0 1 2 3 4 5

   power =:  ^
   x power 2


   x =. 3 4 5 6
   x power 2
9 16 25 36
   2 power x
8 16 32 64


J comes with many tutorial labs as part of the IDE.

J processes vectors and arrays with ease.

J forums have many J'ers willing to guide.




regards,
gerry

"If your only tool is a hammer, all of your problems tend to look like nails".  (author unknown)




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Chase" <pchase at sulross.edu>
To: <edu-sig at python.org>
Sent: Friday, February 24, 2006 3:29 PM
Subject: [Edu-sig] Textbooks


I'm teaching some prospective K-12 teachers this summer and propose to
introduce them to Python.  Reasons are numerous
-   It's the least weird language I know.
-   It offers so many programming styles.
-   And not least, it's free

SO:  Any recommendations as to course textbooks?  Or just go with Zelle
and/or O'Reilly's latest wood rat book?
-   The students presumably have had programming courses already.
-   I would think that K-12 students would be happier if they could
generate some graphics.
-   This is a 6-weeks course.  Little leisure time.

Appreciate any advice.

Peter Chase
Sul Ross State University






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