[Edu-sig] Articles of possible interest

[Randy Latimer]

David - Randy Latimer here from TJ...If you want to do some "end-of-year"
Python let me know, I think we could implement it pretty easy.  It'd be a
good experiment.  Randy L.

On Fri, 28 Apr 2000, David Scherer wrote:

> > Yow! Ther's an interesting idea. But you know, I want to argue against it
> > -- LambdaMOO is such a nice system already, and has a very, very nice
> > language (though, appropriately, much more limited in domain than Python),
> > what I think we maybe need is Python-MOO integration... maybe a MOO-Zope
> > integration. THAT would be truly cool.
> 
> I hope you will elaborate on the latter, but I still believe that an
> *entirely* Python MOO would be an extremely useful tool for teaching
> programming, precisely because Python is not "limited in domain."
> 
> Beginning programmers struggle with language syntax and semantics - it is
> only later, after one or more languages have been mastered, that people
> begin to abstract away the differences.  Learning multiple languages is
> powerful and important, but needing to deal with multiple languages *right
> away* is a big problem.
> 
> Python's strength for CP4E is that it is both easy to learn and
> general-purpose.  Python is powerful enough to be the *implementation*
> language for a MOO server, as well as the scripting language.  I think that
> a MOO could be carefully designed so that as students advance they can go
> from simply exploring the world ("take apple") to extending the world
> ("class apple:") all the way to extending the implementation ("class
> emailPager:").
> 
> Learning a MOO language would teach someone the fundamentals of programming,
> but it would leave them powerless to apply them in the REAL world.  That's
> fine if you are a highly motivated person who will pick up and learn other
> programming languages - but "Everyone" will not do that.  On the other hand,
> it's a small step from using Python to manipulate a MOO environment to using
> it to manipulate other things.
> 
> > Bruckman's dissertation (http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~asb/thesis) has some
> > amazing material covering adolescent girls programming interactive agents.
> > The CP4E community really needs to be aware of this work.
> 
> Indeed.  I had seen this before, but couldn't remember the reference in
> support of my previous post.
> 
> Dave
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Edu-sig mailing list
> Edu-sig@python.org
> http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
>