[Python-Dev] Informal educator feedback on PEP 572 (was Re: 2018 Python Language Summit coverage, last part)

[Michael Selik]

On Sun, Jul 1, 2018 at 5:28 PM Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 01, 2018 at 08:35:08AM -0700, Michael Selik wrote:
> > On Sun, Jul 1, 2018 at 12:39 AM Tim Peters <tim.peters at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > So, ya, when someone claims [assignment expressions will] make Python
> > > significantly harder to teach, I'm skeptical of that claim.
> > >
> >
> > I don't believe anyone is making that claim. My worry is that assignment
> > expressions will add about 15 to 20 minutes to my class and a slight
> > discomfort.
>
> How do people who teach other languages deal with this?
>

Python may be in a unique situation in the history of programming. It
wouldn't surprise me if more people learned Python last year than any other
programming language.



> Assignment expressions are hardly a new-fangled innovation of Python's.
> They're used in Java, Javascript, Ruby, Julia, R, PHP and of course
> pretty much the entire C family (C, C++, C# at least). What do
> teachers of those languages do?
>

Assignment expressions are not the issue. The real question is: How do
open-source projects balance the addition of new features against the
growth of complexity? It's the same as that "Remember the Vasa" thread.


[...] R [has] *four* different ways of doing assignment.
>

I think that's a good explanation of why I teach Python and not R. The
first time someone asked me to teach a data science course, Python wasn't
the clear winner. In fact, R may have been more popular among
statisticians. I picked Python for the same reason it's more popular in the
industry -- it's the easiest* to use.

* Easiest that gets the job done well.


> As Mark and Chris said (quoting Mark below), this is just one straw in the
> > struggle against piling too many things on the haystack. Unlike some
> > changes to the language, this change of such general use that it won't be
> > an optional topic. Once widely used, it ain't optional.
>
> Without knowing the details of your course, and who they are aimed at,
> we cannot possibly judge this comment.


I disagree. I think the sentiment holds for a great variety of courses and
audiences.



> Decorators are widely used, but surely you don't teach them in a one day
> introductory class aimed at beginners?
>

Most of the time, no. Once, yes, because that's what the team needed. I was
pretty proud of myself for handling that one. Because I had to teach
decorators early, many other important topics were excluded.


Here is the syllabus for a ten week course:
> https://canvas.uw.edu/courses/1026775/pages/python-100-course-syllabus
>
> Note that decorators and even regular expressions don't get touched
> until week ten. If you can't fit assignment expressions in a ten week
> course, you're doing something wrong. If you can't fit them in a two
> hour beginners course, there is so much more that you aren't covering
> that nobody will notice the lack.
>

It's not about any one particular topic, but the trade-offs between topics.
A 10-week lecture course might be 30 hours of lecture, comparable to a
4-day "bootcamp" style course. I assure you that 4 days doesn't feel long
enough when those last few hours are winding down. There's always more to
say.
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