[Edu-sig] Learning/Teaching Python

[Dirk-Ulrich Heise]

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Elizabeth Byers <ebyers@mountain.org>
An: edu-sig@python.org <edu-sig@python.org>
Datum: Freitag, 4. Februar 2000 16:11
Betreff: [Edu-sig] Learning/Teaching Python


[...]
>I know it will be an uphill battle to
>convince teachers that it is worth the effort to try this,
>instead of just teaching word processing and MS Office.

Being german, i know nothing about the american schools;
but is that really true? They teach something like Winword
in school and omit programming? Okay, maybe this
sort of stuff happens today in Germany as well, it's a while
ago that i left school. I remember sitting in front of CBM 4032
(yeah okay, it's AGES since i left school...)
machines and learning to program them in BASIC. The math
teachers ran the courses voluntarily and they always wanted
to convince us that Pascal is better. (This wasn't true for several
reasons: Pascal had a slow compiler, BASIC was interpreted
immediately; Pascal had a impractical type system (no casts),
BASIC had nearly no types (no types == no errors). But the
worst thing was: Pascal didn't allow to poke bytes into memory,
so we needed BASIC to get our machine programs running,
for really fast graphics.
That was when the math teachers realized they had lost control.
Anyway. )

Hmm. You could show them how a Python takes control
over Word using the COM interface. This would show them
that Python is mightier than Word. (The snake is mightier
than the feather.)

Dirk