Python and Flaming Thunder

[Dan Upton]

On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 12:11 PM, Dave Parker
<daveparker at flamingthunder.com> wrote:
> On May 21, 10:00 am, "Dan Upton" <up... at virginia.edu> wrote:
>
>> Sounds to me like the teacher is being difficult, ...
>
> No, proof-by-contradiction is a common technique in math.  If you can
> show that x=8 and x=10, then you have shown that your assumptions were
> incorrect.

Yes, I'm aware of proof by contradiction.  However, I think there's a
flaw in your use of this to justify your case--proof by contradiction
would essentially be showing x=8 and x=10 simultaneously, whereas the
sequence of instructions

x=8
x=10

imply a time relation, and there's no contradiction that x equals
something at one point in time, and something else at another point in
time.  (For any kid who is capable of understanding variables anyway,
just tell them something to the effect of "Plot the line y=x.  Okay,
now let 'y' be time.  At no point in time does x take on two values,
but it may take on different values at different points in time.  Same
concept.")

>
>> If you can't do, or don't like, math, you probably shouldn't be
>> programming.
>
> Why not?  Recipes are programs.  I prefer to look at it the other way:
> an easy-to-use programming language might encourage more people to
> like math.

To continue your analogy, if a recipe is the program, a person is the
computer.  Following a recipe is (relatively) easy, making up a new
recipe is relatively difficult unless you understand, or are at least
willing to tinker with, things like interactions between ingredients
and flavors.  Likewise, it's tedious and time-consuming but not
necessarily difficult to follow a program (assuming you understand the
rules of the language; I suppose here you could make some argument
"it'd be easier to read it in English"), but you need to understand
more about symbolic reasoning and such to be able to do much in the
way of programming.

All the same, I suppose you might have a point there, if you can show
somebody something cool while sneaking in the math and programming
such that they learn without even realizing it--somewhat akin to the
guy who a month or so ago wanted to sneakily teach his high school
class programming fundamentals by teaching them game programming.

>> You keep trotting out this quadratic equation example, but does FT
>> actually have any kind of useful equation solver in it?
>
> Not yet, but it will.  Probably around July.

Maybe this should be your selling point, and maybe you should be
drawing comparisons to programming in Matlab or Mathematica.