[Edu-sig] re: Python Programming: An IntroductiontoComputerScience

[Kirby Urner]

> failure in my eyes, and doesn't really cover programming. Unfortuantly I
> just don't see python covering the VB niche, because of it's non-visual
> nature, and I can't really see a good argument for it being in the
> Business
> curriculum.
> 

I think the quickest/easiest way to get a business face on Python, in the
sense of a visual front end, is to do some simple cgi stuff.  

Use the browser and its <FORM></FORM> tags to provide interactive widgets,
not Tk, not wxPython (the latter could come later).  

This isn't to say I'm opposed to the graphics.py type exercises ala John
Zelle.  But in business, ecommerce is more the thing.  Even intranets use
the browser these days.  Plus business *has* to introduce SQL (I can't
imagine leaving this out), so a relational database simply *must* be in the
picture.

In the business context, the goal is to see how a programming language gets
between the browser and a database.  Python is good at this.

Kirby