[Edu-sig] [python-advocacy] education as Python killer app

[kirby urner]

I'm obviously a tourist in the English language this AM.  Let me
elaborate slightly while fixing a few typos:

> I use the word "tourist" a lot, and I think computer world is so huge
> that we're all tourists in big parts of it, when we wander far afield
> (to be encouraged -- changes are we bring back new insights, or
> maybe even move the home office).

"-- chances are..."

There's a lot of security in having a job title and a place in some
pecking order sometimes, and tourists, especially if traveling
alone, have to put up with being "incognito" for long spells.

Yet this ability to become humble without suffering humiliation,
mortal without becoming mortified, is a key to restarting one's
career and/or moving into a new space, new skills.  A little
humiliation and mortification is even OK -- goes with being
a tourist.

I've always felt that computer skills in themselves promote a
kind of tourism, in that people in so many walkx of life need
their computers programmed.  Looking back on a long career,
it's amazing where I've been tasked to write code, including
in the Kingdom of Bhutan, where I also taught generic xBase
skills (another language I use a lot, originally marketed as
dBase).

>
> A tourist in Python Nation might be a high mucky muck in the
> Republic of Perl (they actually have their own names for these
> things).
>

"Monks" are pretty high level right?

> Science would be ruined if it were to withdraw entirely into
> narrowly defined specialties. The rare scholars who are
> wanderers-by-choice are essential to the intellectual welfare
> of the settled disciplines
>
> -- Benoit Mandelbrot
>

See: wwwanderers.org

> apply, depending on the namespace.  I've you're a master of
> Python, you might be a snake charmer in my book.
>
> Kirby

"IF you're a master..." blah blah.

Kirby