State of Python - revisited

[Dave Reed]

On Tuesday 27 May 2003 18:36, J. Filici wrote:
> python473 at yahoo.com (John Howard) wrote in message 
news:<9eabe547.0305270817.7cae4e94 at posting.google.com>...
> > So.....
> > 
> > Is python being taught anywhere?
> > 
> > Can someone give specific places and course title, etc?
> > 
> > By the way, I do know of 1 textbook.  Learning python by Deitel 
(sp?).
> > 
> > Best regards,
> > 
> > John
> 
> From something I read on Tim Bray's weblog, it appears that Macquarie
> University in Sydney, Australia uses Python as a teaching language. 
> For example, an assignment from the Comp 249 course:
> 
> 
http://www.comp.mq.edu.au/courses/comp249/Assignments-2003/4/index.html


This year we (Capital University in Columbus, OH) started using it in
CS1 and are using both Python and C++ in CS2. My software engineering
class used Python for their class project (with great success). All of
them knew C++ and most of them had at least been exposed to some
Python by a presentation on it in a Programming Languages course but
only two or three of them had any prior programming experience with
Python. 

I had been toying with the idea of using Python in the beginning
courses for about 2 years and then I met John Zelle at a SIGCSE
conference in Feb. 2001 and after seeing a prepublication copy of his
book, I talked my colleagues into making the switch. I and the other
person who taught CS1 this fall both found Python and the book to work
extremely well and we will be using both of them again this fall.

See his web site for information and a prepublication copy of the book
(the publication details are also listed here).

http://mcsp.wartburg.edu/zelle/python/

Dave