[Edu-sig] More on teaching about namespaces

[Arthur]

kirby urner wrote:

>What I like about namespaces is the idea is intuitively obvious to
>anyone spending any time in academia, because every professor is one.
>It takes time to learn just what each means by this or that key term,
>although supposedly in math it's easier, because all the definitions
>are agreed upon in advance, axioms too, plus rules of deduction, so
>the theorems also.
>
>My idea of a good first move, after booting some Python GUI shell for
>the first time, is to go dir().
>
>IDLE 1.2b2
>  
>
>>>>dir()
>>>>        
>>>>
>['__builtins__', '__doc__', '__name__']
>
>Already the filling is:  we're not alone.  And what are those weird
>__xxx__ things.  They look strange.  Thinking like a computer
>scientist, you mentally pair tics and decide we have three quoted
>words, like a list of some time.  See?  Python fits your brain.
>You're already thinking like a pro.  Instead of words we say strings,
>and a space is just one more character (ASCII 32).
>  
>

Damn it if I don't agree.

Exactly where I would start as well.

Art