Python for Newbies

[rm]

On Dec 9, 9:46 pm, "Alf P. Steinbach" <al... at start.no> wrote:
> * rm:
>
> > Here is a new tutorial that may be a good starting point for learning
> > Python.
>
> >http://www.themaemo.com/python-for-newbies/
>
> Looks nice.
>
> I have two comments: (1) what is "the N900"?, and (2) the naming convention,
> using 'Num' for a variable and 'clsAddress' for a class, is opposite of the
> usual Python convention where one'd write 'num' and 'Address'.
>
> Shameless plug for my own writings, an introduction to /programming/ for
> newbies, using Python  --  this work is progressing slowly but steadily:
>
>    <url:http://preview.tinyurl.com/ProgrammingBookP3>
>
> which is in Google Docs; a table of contents available as text file (it's not
> complete wrt. to latest stuff I added) and also in the PDF files themselves.
>
> Comments very welcome! :-)
>
> Cheers,
>
> - Alf
>
> PS: The last three or four paragraphs in ch 2 were sort of negative so I've
> replaced them with one single short much more upbeat paragraph. Working...

One of the reasons I started writing this tutorial was because I found
the lot of existing tutorials lacking in their approachability by
people new to programming.  Just about all of them were either not
comprehensive enough, or seemed written by geniuses for geniuses. I
hope you will allow me to quote a little excerpt from your tutorial
that makes my point quite eloquently:

"I have to use as-yet-unexplained language features in order to
present examples that do relevant things, because it would be too much
to explain the language features & concepts here.  These features are
explained in later chapters, so for now you can just adopt a very
casual attitude, hey, it works!"

Don't get me wrong, your approach probably works for a certain type of
people.  But there are a lot of us that find this approach very
difficult to follow.  The approach of this tutorial is gradually
introduce new concepts so that the student can follow along at a
logical and pleasant pace.  Yes, it has a disadvantage.  The examples
can't be too elaborate.  But, the purpose of tutorial, to teach the
language, is better accomplished this way.  If I was teaching a group
of people the English language, I would not go about doing so with a
George Gordon Byron poem.