[Edu-sig] What version of Python to teach ....

[Laura Creighton]

In a message of Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:25:29 PDT, Edward Cherlin writes:
>No, I'm suggesting that an introductory course on Python 3.0 can make
>use of converted and lightly massaged code, and ignore Python 2.x
>until students have wrapped their minds around one version. Computer
>Science students are not necessarily interested in commercial
>programming, and may never need to learn 2.x. People learning Python
>in order to write their own programs, ditto. The original question was
>how to get enough educational examples in Python 3.0.

But the ability to read code is not something that should be left to
commercial programmers.  Unless you are at an age where reading itself
is problematical, there is no better way to become a better programmer
than to spend an hour a day reading other people's well-written code.
This 'how to read code' is something that belongs in everybody's
Introductory course, and it is something that we are going to have to
pay special attention to these days, if you are teaching Python 3.0,
rather than assuming that students will learn how to read code just by
following your teaching exercises.  The code that you are likely to
assign to students as reading assignments, and the code (aside from
the Python interpreter and the standard library itself) that they are
likely to want to read will be 2.x code.

>For the larger problem of converting existing 2.x libraries and
>applications in order to have more 3.0 to read, that will solve itself
>in the normal course of events. See Guido's advice.

>http://docs.python.org/3.0/whatsnew/3.0.html

This assumes that the creators of 2.x programs intend to move their
old code to 3.0.  For a large fraction of the existing programs out
there, this simply will never happen.  It has been a long time since
these programs were in active development, they are stable, and nobody
wants to go around poking a hornet's nest with a stick if they don't
have to.  The importance of lessons in 'how to read 2.x programs' may
diminish as time goes on, but I predict that it will never go away
altogether.

Laura