[Edu-sig] Why Python?

[kirby urner]

On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 7:51 PM, Edward Cherlin <echerlin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 21:03, Andrew Harrington <aharrin at luc.edu> wrote:
>> Well put David.
>>
>> My choices are always about me and a particular situation.  I would not
>> teach J to beginners
>
> I would use the +-*% (+-×÷) subset of J in first grade for arithmetic,
> alongside Turtle Art (with stack tiles), and  Etoys, including
> Scratch. By third grade, we could introduce programming in J/APL,
> Logo/LISP, FORTH, Python, and Smalltalk. At some point, we could show
> how each represents the same internal parse tree in quite different
> textual forms. What the LISPers call "syntactic sugar". This is a
> fundamental Computer Science concept.
>

I'd like to see a school form around your druthers, with ways to
facilitate turnover, so those most advantaged by this approach
would have some chance to (a) discover this for themselves
and (b) keep a slot in an initially rare environment.

One would hope we might learn enough from your approach to
transfer some of what's working to other sites.

Your school of thought would spread in proportion to its achieving
results, but without this stultifying demand that everything be proven
risk-free before any pilots get started (as if the status quo were
a result of such iron-clad assurances).

A vicious circle:  don't try anything until you can prove it's not in
error.  This results in paralysis, in nothing being tried.  Nothing
ventured, nothing gained -- we've all heard that a million times.

Hey, I'd've provided you with space and a budget years ago.  We'd
be reading of your stellar results in the electronic papers by now!

All that being said, I'd also sponsor other schools with quite different
approaches.  Television programming is even more powerful than
computer programming in a lot of ways, as it feeds directly into the
optic nerve thereby filling human memory banks, helping condition
responses.  What a powerful medium!

Some schools need to put more focus on TV skills, lest all the
effective recruiting commercials be for competing services.

Maybe the math curriculum includes some J, but with a starry
sky backdrop, with class content projected to a sheet strung
between tree trunks (or is the sheet itself some kind of LCD?).

You had to hike 20 miles to get here.  A lot of the databases you
study are about local flora and fauna.  Some kind of boarding
school?  International students?  Public?  Federally funded?

Lets fight early onset diabetes by ending discrimination against
physical activity as intrinsically "non-mathematical".

"Math is an outdoor sport" is one of our slogans.

>> or to people not crunching a lot of mathematical stuff
>> regularly, but for the professional statisticians and electronic traders I
>> know, J is a fabulous language, and very worth the modest learning curve.
>
> J would enable children to crunch data sets easily, allowing a radical
> deepening of every subject. The learning curve would be very modest
> when integrated with arithmetic and elementary science, and applied to
> languages, history, geography, health, and gym.
>

Glad you mentioned health and gym.  Doing the math around joules
and calories, relating these to food values (content):  lots of crunchy
data sets to work with, as you say, lots of working out.

The chemistry of food, digestion, and nutrition, includes cooking, learning
to cook.  Where those TV-making skills come in handy: producing cooking
shows for the school servers.

Using Python for a graphing calculator in math class need to not
be special, extraordinary, honors or advanced.  It's just the obvious
and everyday thing we should be doing already.

Besides, maybe we're not going to college right away?  Other
services calling, and offering their own training?

Given how FUBAR the Global U is right now, one could understand
why creating high debt for high tuitions simply to further over-specialize
our students might be considered counter-productive.

How about scholarships for veterans to enter nursing, other medical
professions?

The health professions are ravenous for computing and data
services.

My daughter is the Portland district champion debater at 15,
having started her high school's team in the first place.  I worry
though:  why waste her talents at some backward academy
that doesn't even teach about tetrahedral mensuration?  How
many dead mineshaft canaries does it take I wonder?

Maybe by the time she graduates we'll have some respectable
colleges out there.

>> J is an interesting case.  Iverson did not totally open up the source.
>
> There is a published version of the source for an earlier version of
> J, without the IDE, graphics, and so on. I have a copy. There has been
> some talk of creating a Free Software version, but no activity that I
> know of. However, Iverson's son Eric is considering GPLing some
> version of J in support of One Laptop Per Child and Sugar Labs. I need
> to bother him about it again, because I am about to apply for two XO
> 1.5 units to use in preparing an introductory text on electricity. It
> will use the built-in digital oscilloscope function (Measure) on the
> XO, among other things, and will explain how to build and take data
> from measuring instruments. I would be interested in working with
> Pythonistas on a version using numpy and scipy.

I'm still pretty hands-off with the XO despite having two of them,
and even though I promote OLPC extensively through most
excellent photography and journaling.

The XO is for young children whereas I tend to not have much
opportunity to work with those age groups.  I tend to work
with teens and older.

All youth should be working on motor skills, both gross and fine,
so it's important to me that computers not mess up the diet
and exercise balance.  The idea of a hand-cranked XO was
always intriguing.

Didactic challenge courses involving interactive electronics
that double as physical work-outs -- designers getting into
that are in on the ground floor of something big?

Kirby