[Python-ideas] Framework for Python for CS101

[Chris Barker]

On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 10:36 PM, Rustom Mody <rustompmody at gmail.com> wrote:

> If you think the separation of these two worlds is unnecessary then you
> have the mess of C's 'expressions' like ++
> And you will have students puzzling over the wonders of nature like i =
> i++ whereas the most useful answer would be "Syntax Error"
>

A good reason NOT to teach C as a first language ;-)


> And finally all this is rather OT.  I am talking of a framework for a
> teacher to chart a course through python, not any changes per se to python
> itself.
>

I would argue that you are actually not talking about teaching Python, per
se -- but using a (subset) of python to teach programming in the more
general sense.

If you want to teach Python, then I think it is a mistake to teach a
truncated version first -- it will just lead to confusion later.

But having a "functional" version of Python for teaching functional
programming concepts makes some sense.

Though I think one woulc create that as a monkey=patched version of python
wihtout hacing into the core pyton implimentaiton:

i.e. replace map(), etc, with versions that return tuples, rather than
lists, that kind of thing.

though maybe replacing list comprehensions with tuple comprehensions would
be a bit tricky...

Though I'm still not sure you'd need to -- sure you CAN mutate a list, but
if you use functional approaches, lists won't get mutated -- so where is
the source of the confusion?

-Chris



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Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
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