[Edu-sig] Edu-sig page advice to teachers

[Andre Roberge]

Hi everyone,

I have added links to  Charles Severance's book and to Fotis Georgatos's MSc
thesis on the edu-sig page.

I have also tried to take into account the following comment (and ensuing
discussion):

On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 9:18 PM, kirby urner <kirby.urner at gmail.com> wrote:

> Current verbiage:
>
> """
> As a result of the changes, programs written for Python 2 are likely
> to be incompatible with Python 3 (and vice-versa). Since both versions
> are going to co-exist for a while, a choice has to be made as to which
> one to use. As a very subjective opinion, we would like to offer the
> following:
>
>    * Consider the possibility of teaching both Python 2 and 3. If you
> are teaching beginners, the only significant differences are the print
> statement/function and the integer division [and possibly the
> input()/raw_input() changes...] which you can point out as you go
> along. Of course, you will have to decide on a common version to
> install for everyone to use; to decide which one, or if you really
> want to focus on teaching only one version, we suggest that you
> consider the other two alternatives.
>    * Teach Python 3 if you only plan to teach Python as an
> introductory language (say in a CS-1 course), making use only of
> modules included in the standard distribution. Alternatively, if you
> teach Python in languages other than English, where non-ascii
> characters could be put to good use in writing identifiers, then
> Python 3 should definitely be your choice.
>    * Teach Python 2 if you think you might be using third-party
> modules not included in the standard Python distribution, or if you
> are not familiar with Python. You may want to consider teaching Python
> using the older version (2.6 is the most current release) until more
> third-party modules have been ported to the new Python version, and
> more tutorials for the new version are available.
> """
>
> I'm wondering if this should be fine tuned to more explicitly
> encourage 2.6 and above if doing Python 2 (because of
> 3rd party dependencies), 3.x in all other cases.
>
>
> [snip]

Ok, here's the revised version  (please feel free to suggest changes):

As a result of the changes, programs written for Python 2 are likely to be
incompatible with Python 3 (and vice-versa). Some of you may have not
control over which Python version is made available to the students. If that
is the case, you should not despair too much if you and your students do not
have access to the best/latest version of Python: Python is a fantastic
choice as a first language and the relatively minor changes between versions
do not change this fact.

*If* you have some control over which version of Python is made available to
the students, then you have a choice to make. In this case, and as a *very
subjective opinion*, we would like to offer the following:

   - Use Python 2, and more specifically version 2.6, if you think you might
   be using third-party modules not included in the standard Python
   distribution, or if you are not familiar with Python (in which case you may
   not yet realise that you might need some third-party modules.)
   - Use Python 3, and more specifically version 3.1, if you only plan to
   teach Python as an introductory language (say in a CS-1 course), making use
   *only* of modules included in the standard distribution. Alternatively,
   if you teach Python in languages other than English, where non-ascii
   characters could be put to good use in writing identifiers, then Python 3
   should definitely be your choice.
   - Consider the possibility of teaching both Python 2 and 3. If you are
   teaching beginners, the only significant differences are the print
   statement/function, the integer division and possibly the
   input()/raw_input() changes... which you can point out as you go along. Of
   course, you will have to decide on a common version to install for everyone
   to use.



>
> An appropriate topic for discussion though.  What 3rd
> party libraries would break?


wxPython is one of them.  Since rur-ple uses it, I am keenly aware of that
one.

I understand that BeautifulSoup for Python 3.1 is (currently) not as
"beautiful"  (read: forgiving for poorly formed html) as the version
available for Python 2.x.

For those that would introduce Python in a math/natural science context, I
believe that numpy has not been ported yet.

etc....

Cheers,

André


 I'm big into VPython, so right
> off the bat I'm facing such issues.  Anyone else using that
> or am I the only one?
>
> Kirby
>
> --
> >>> from mars import math
> http://www.wikieducator.org/Digital_Math
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> Edu-sig at python.org
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
>
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