[Edu-sig] Python Pedagogy

[kirby urner]

On 7/22/06, Arthur <ajsiegel at optonline.net> wrote:

> I don't know, sometimes I think that Terrence and Philip better
> describes us as a duo then Itchy and Scratchy.
>

I don't know who Terrence and Philip are.  I think Itchy and Scratchy
are those incredibly violent cartoon characters on the Simpson's TV.

> a) I am not talking about English grammar.  I am talking about a
> connection to the "language center"  - in the what makes humans humans
> sort of way - and the way that something like Python can be connect to
> that center, as language.  But having its own grammar - Dijkstra says
> that the search for the natural language programming language is another
> exploration to pursue for those who like dead-ends, and I believe him -
> , and connected to English in particular only to the extent it needs to
> be connected to something that is already language.

I admire humans for not waiting for computers to think like humans
(through some godawfully complicated API one might suppose), and
instead trained themselves to think like computers.  The mental model
was whatever the hardware dictated.

That's what Kung Fu is all about:  be like the grasshopper,
Grasshopper, or horse or beaver or whatever.  Become what you wish to
have power over.

And that's what so many engineers just sat down and did.  They lived
and breathed "microchip" (registers, ALU, bus, RAM...).

Now, decades later, we have VHLLs like Python and J, and don't really
need to transmogrify our thinking so completely.  In contrast to
chip-speak, Python is veritably natural, organic to boot.

J is somewhat alien, true, but no one said ETs couldn't play.

> b) I have done some J and it is hard to think of  a programming language
> more abstracted away from natural language, i.e. less readable, and
> since I am talking about leveraging the existing strengths of an actual
> programming language - in this case Python -  not sure how it comes up
> as in "yeah J as well".
>
> Whatever.
>
> Art

But wouldn't we say about the same about Egyptian or Sumerian.

J *is* a human language after all, invented by humans who write for
humans who read.

It's ostensibly unreadable to the unschooled eye, but after
transmogrification, it reads fairly easily -- at least the basic stuff
does (I've only glimpsed this promised land -- my ability to parse J
is still beginner level).

I can't look at readable English and force myself to see it as
incomprehensible, as it once was to me.  It's easy to see Japanese
that way (for me), but I presume not for a Japanese reader.

As Wittgenstein was always emphasizing, "meaning" is *so much* about
perceptions -- so much so that it's almost impossible talk coherently
about the importance of this level, as we're each so deeply down a
mineshaft already, and wondering what "vertical" means in this
context.

Kirby

PS:  when I talked about 'Alice' before as both 1st and 3rd person, I
wasn't talking about the 'Alice' we usually talk about here.  I was
talking about a game that I own, let my daughter play sometimes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_McGee's_Alice (a classic).