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

[Edward Cherlin]

Comments interspersed.

On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 9:49 PM, Scott David Daniels
<Scott.Daniels at acm.org> wrote:
> Laura Creighton wrote:
>>
>> One note:
>> It is very important to teach your students how to read code.  I think
>> that
>> this is even more important that teaching them how to write code -- not
>> only will they spend more time reading code than writing code in their
>> lives, but it is through reading other people's code that you can learn
>> any technique for writing code.  (Well, that, and a whole lot of practice,
>> but a certain amount of reading of code every day can cut down on the
>> number of things that you have to learn by doing.)
>>
>> There isn't a lot of Python 3.0 code out there to read.  So even if you
>> are only teaching your students how to write 3.0, you will still have to
>> teach them how to read 2.x.

But not right away.

> But here is a learning opportunity as well -- too many students are
> used to received wisdom, and assume there is nothing to discover.

That's why Sugar software is all about collaborative discovery. At
some point, we will be able to engage our millions of students in the
conversion of Sugar to Python 3.0.

> To say that Python is in motion, that we have learned from our mistakes,
> that we are forging a new way forward, and that they can be a part of
> how to say things well in this new language is to begin to explain that
> things are moving and they can be a part of that movement.

+1

> One of the great disappointments from teaching my first computer science
> class (operating systems) came after a lecture where I discussed some
> of the publications going on about these new-fangled RAID systems.  I
> had students explain to me that a new way of organizing file systems
> could not be as efficient as I described, because Microsoft and IBM
> would be using such designs if they really worked.  Students need to
> know that not everything has been done.

They also need some education on the ways in which Microsoft and IBM
have deliberately held back technical progress in furtherance of their
anti-competitive business strategies. A biography of John Patterson
National Cash Register would be a good place to start. That's where
Tom Watson learned how to crush competition and then buy them up
cheap, and suffered his first antitrust lawsuit. Then Patterson, as
was his habit with almost everybody who learned his methods, fired
Watson, who bought the Computing Tabulating Recording company, owner
of the Hollerith punched card patents, and renamed it International
Business Machines. The literature on IBM's shenanigans is huge.
Microsoft actually lost an antitrust suit, and was labeled a criminal
organization, although not punished as such after the Bush DoJ took
over the case.

See also the Groklaw archives on the SCO suit and other attempts to
hold back Linux.

Anyway, this is an old, old story. Perhaps it would be as well to
prepare the way with some examples.

My favorite is that when L. Frank Baum, a successful children's writer
at that time, offered The Wizard of Oz to his publishers, they turned
in down on the grounds that there was no market for American fairy
tales. He asked how they knew, and they pointed out that no publisher
had any on the market. Every other publisher he tried said the same
thing. So he had to offer to pay the costs for the first printing
himself to get anybody to take the risk. His first royalty check was
enough to buy a house.

One of the Warner Brothers said of talking movies, "Who wants to hear
actors talk?"

All radio manufacturers initially turned down the transistor, except Sony.

General Electric turned down photovoltaics, because they were too
expensive for building power plants. Japanese manufacturers then put
them on calculators. You don't have to replace the cheapest use first.
Start with the most expensive.

The actually relevant examples for your class are in The Innovator's
Dilemma, which is specifically about this problem in the disk storage
business. The leaders in each generation nearly all became followers
or disappeared in the next generation.

> --Scott David Daniels
> Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org
>
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And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination.
http://earthtreasury.org/worknet (Edward Mokurai Cherlin)