[Edu-sig] interactive python tutorial online (as tryruby)

[kirby urner]

<rant>

Count me a skeptic that there's anything unattractive about Python
that's to blame for keeping it from wider use in school systems.

Once you go down that road, of soliciting off-the-cuff feedback,
you'll get endless nonsense about making it case insensitive, adding a
"schoolish math" division symbol, or in general making it more like
Mathematica, meaning superscripts, subscripts... and voila, no more
Python (I call it the disappearing snake trick).

I prefer counter-carping about those ugly computer-illiterate
notations, a typographer's nightmare (or job security depending how
you look at it): over-indulgence in single-symbol expressions;
obsession with lambda, sigma -- too clever by half, a way to
obfuscate, not friendly to children (deliberately -- going for that
imposing, austere look, trying to intimidate (very Springer-Verlag,
the opposite of O'Reilly's far friendlier 'Head First' series)).

Why many smart geeks drop pre- or even anti-computer "schoolish math"
like a hot potato is they realize it:

(a) doesn't execute (i.e. is dead on arrival, DOA) and

(b) is designed to pump up egos at the expense of readability, nothing
so sane as the Zen of Python at work.

</rant>

Kirby

On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 9:34 AM, Andre Roberge <andre.roberge at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 10:06 AM, Jurgis Pralgauskis
> <jurgis.pralgauskis at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> it would make python more attractive,
>> if there would be possibility  to try it online
>> like ruby has http://tryruby.hobix.com
>>
>> maybe this could be made with jython , http://code.google.com/p/epy/
>> or crunchy on GAE