From ajsiegel at optonline.net Wed Oct 1 09:42:08 2003 From: ajsiegel at optonline.net (Arthur) Date: Wed Oct 1 09:42:23 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] re: PyCon 2004 Proposals for Presentations... References: <000901c38532$ce0307f0$0c02a8c0@Arts> <1064967607.5924.32.camel@robeson> Message-ID: <001801c38821$cf134230$0c02a8c0@Arts> >From: "Jeffrey Elkner" > Hi All, > > I just set up a Zwiki to help with planning for the Education Track at > PyCon 2004: > > http://linus.yorktown.arlington.k12.va.us/PyCon2004/EduTrack/ > > Please feel encouraged to add to it. I'm still a relative Zwiki newbie, > so any help in making it look nicer or work better would be *greatly* > appreciated. And the wonderful about wiki's is you don't even have to > ask for permission, just do it! Did it - a short of Pygeo and what I hope to present in respect ot it. > Sounds great. Of the many things I love about Python, the way that it > empowers educators to create their own tools (or get their students to > do it for them ;-) is among the top. Yes. And I like the word "tool" in this context. Sometimes - and only sometimes - the right tool happens to be a piece of software. Art From brpreiss at brpreiss.com Wed Oct 1 22:03:19 2003 From: brpreiss at brpreiss.com (Bruno R. Preiss) Date: Wed Oct 1 22:02:56 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] DS&A book Message-ID: <3F7B8767.9040406@brpreiss.com> I have prepared a draft of a book entitled "Data Structures and Algorithms with Object-Oriented Design Patterns in Python." A web version is now available online at http://www.brpreiss.com/books/opus7. Bruno -- Bruno R. Preiss brpreiss@brpreiss.com www.brpreiss.com -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature Size: 3257 bytes Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature Url : http://mail.python.org/pipermail/edu-sig/attachments/20031001/7edda9a3/smime.bin From ajsiegel at optonline.net Thu Oct 2 09:47:38 2003 From: ajsiegel at optonline.net (Arthur) Date: Thu Oct 2 09:47:52 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Fw: [Visualpython-users] VPython and LiveZope Message-ID: <001101c388eb$be59e3c0$0c02a8c0@Arts> Thought this is worthwhile forwarding. The message to the visual-python list had a nice screenshot, which I removed, as the forwarding bounced with it attached. Art ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bruce Sherwood" To: "vpusers" Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2003 8:24 AM Subject: [Visualpython-users] VPython and LiveZope > -------- Original Message -------- > > Subject: Re: Vpython in bootable linux cdrom > Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2003 23:35:34 +0800 > From: chu-ching huang > To: Bruce Sherwood > References: <000901c38720$258ebac0$a76819a3@math> > <3F79D3F9.9030104@unity.ncsu.edu> > > > Hi Bruce Sherwood, > > As attached, VPython example running under pythonIDE, boa-constructor, > in LiveZope-0.1. > > Best regards, > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > chu-ching huang > > email address:cchuang@mail.cgu.edu.tw > > ************************ > > I asked Chu-Ching Huang about what he had sent me, and here are his comments: > > On Wed, 01 Oct 2003 22:10:36 -0400, Bruce Sherwood wrote > > > Thanks much for showing this to me. Please explain the significance, > > > because I don't know what boa-constructor is, nor Zope, nor LiveZope, > > > nor Knoppix. As you can see, my ignorance is quite broad! > > Boa-constructor is a project supported by sourceforge. It is similar to IDLE > > but with more functionalities. > > Zope is open CMS, Content Management System, developed mainly by Python. > > It owns its http and ftp server abilites. > > Knoppix is live Linux CDROM. As booting from this CDROM, Linux is ready for > > users. LiveZope is Knoppix- based integration of Python resource, including > > Zope with its products, VPython, biopython etc. It is built for establishing > > Linux-based courses including Math, Phy and Med. > > > > Your development may be very important, because many people have wanted > > > to be able to run VPython programs in a browser. Is that what you > > > have achieved? Can this work in other browsers? > > I purpose to integrate the Vpython codes into Zope server but no achieved. > > It can only run on Xterm or IDE env. > > > > I only see one of the two graphics windows that gas.py produces. The > > > other is an animation of a gas of colliding hard spheres. Does your > > > environment not display the animation window? > > The animation is displayed but removed as catching picture by the program > > "ksnapshot". > > > > Is your work available to others? If so, I would be pleased to advertise > > > your work to the VPython community through its user mailing list. > > Yes, LiveZope is also released under GPL license. > > The previous LiveZope-0.1 can be downloaded from: > > http://sourceforge.net/projects/open-outcomes > > or > > ftp://ftp.texmacs.org/pub/TeXmacs/knoppix > > And the last LiveZope-0.1.2 can be downloaded from > > ftp://math.cgu.edu.tw/pub/KNOPPIX > > Best regards, > > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > > chu-ching huang > > email address:cchuang@mail.cgu.edu.tw > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- From delza at blastradius.com Thu Oct 2 12:15:23 2003 From: delza at blastradius.com (Dethe Elza) Date: Thu Oct 2 12:15:34 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Fw: [Visualpython-users] VPython and LiveZope In-Reply-To: <001101c388eb$be59e3c0$0c02a8c0@Arts> Message-ID: Knoppix-based distros are pretty cool, just put the CD in and reboot. Your machine loads the entire OS and whatever tools it provides from the CD--nothing is installed to your hard drive. Good for test driving tools or for making Linux-based applications available to Windows users without forcing them to partition their hard drives. At work I've also seen it used as a practical joke, when my boss came in and found his Window machine running Linux he very nearly freaked. I wasn't aware of what happened, but when he asked if I knew anything about Knoppix I was able to tell him to just take out the CD and reboot and he was happily back in Windows land. Loading a real "batteries-included" Python on a Knoppix disk would be great for demos, education, even the lost and forgotten Contagious Fun. By building this as an ISO image we could encourage people to download it (from the SIG page?) and distribute it at conferences and trade shows to get a taste of what Python has to offer. --Dethe From urnerk at qwest.net Thu Oct 2 12:32:38 2003 From: urnerk at qwest.net (Kirby Urner) Date: Thu Oct 2 12:32:42 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] DS&A book In-Reply-To: <3F7B8767.9040406@brpreiss.com> Message-ID: Thanks for the link Bruno. I spent some time looking this over last night and was immediately impressed that you've done parallel books using Java, C++ and C#. That makes your site a good place to compare and contrast, or to move between languages (which likely mirrors your own process in writing them). Apropos to looking at algorithms, I was recently poking around in the MIT computer science curriculum, which has been put on the web recently via http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html In Lecture 1 of 6.046J / 18.410J Introduction to Algorithms, Fall 2001 we have a PDF version of a slideshow discussing the merge-sort algorithm -- in the process of explaining how to derive O(n), a measure of an algorithm's efficiency. I've appended my Pythonic implementation of merge-sort. I'll be studying you book some more as time goes on. I've added it to Favorites in my bookmarks. Kirby PS: Arthur should be pleased, as this is all about using Python in upper level compsci courses, a trimtab as he sees it (point of leverage, for making Python in education really fly). =============== """ See: http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer-Science/ 6-046JIntroduction-to-AlgorithmsFall2001/55D1B4B5-BDA5-4E9E-B05E-5AB0EC974F8 A/0/lecture01.pdf """ import random def merge_sort(thelist): """ Recursive merge sort. Divide list in half recursively down to single entries, merge back together """ if len(thelist) == 1: return thelist else: # slice list in half t1 = thelist[:len(thelist)//2] t2 = thelist[len(thelist)//2:] return merge( merge_sort(t1), merge_sort(t2) ) def merge(t1,t2): """ Merge two lists into one, popping items from one or the other, smaller before larger """ merged = [] while len(t1) + len(t2) > 0: if not len(t2): merged.append(t1.pop(0)) elif not len(t1): merged.append(t2.pop(0)) elif (t1[0] < t2[0]): merged.append(t1.pop(0)) else: merged.append(t2.pop(0)) return merged def utest(): thelist = range(100) random.shuffle(thelist) print thelist print '--->' print merge_sort(thelist) if __name__ == '__main__': utest() > -----Original Message----- > From: edu-sig-bounces@python.org [mailto:edu-sig-bounces@python.org] On > Behalf Of Bruno R. Preiss > Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2003 7:03 PM > To: edu-sig@python.org > Subject: [Edu-sig] DS&A book > > I have prepared a draft of a book entitled "Data Structures and > Algorithms with Object-Oriented Design Patterns in Python." A web > version is now available online at http://www.brpreiss.com/books/opus7. > Bruno > -- > Bruno R. Preiss > brpreiss@brpreiss.com > www.brpreiss.com From urnerk at qwest.net Thu Oct 2 12:45:54 2003 From: urnerk at qwest.net (Kirby Urner) Date: Thu Oct 2 12:45:57 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] re: PyCon 2004 Proposals for Presentations... In-Reply-To: <1064967607.5924.32.camel@robeson> Message-ID: Hi Jeff -- I'm really hoping to add a proposal soon. I still have to see if calendar (and finances) are clear for March 2004, but mostly I'm wanting to find out if the Python course I'm teaching (starting tomorrow!) will provide real world grist for the mill, i.e. the basis for what I would propose to present about. A friend and homeschooling mom set this up among parents she knows, such that about six middle-school aged students will supposedly show up at FreeGeek tomorrow afternoon for their first 1.5 hours of orientation. I'm planning to head down early to see about the class config, which involves diskless workstations hooked to a server running Debian stable. Python is already installed -- I'm pushing to get 2.3 as an option, but understand 2.2 will be available, which is fine (no sets module though -- I wonder if it back ports :-D). I know that classroom teaching of Linux is old hat to yourself and several other subscribers to edu-sig, but I've mostly been the theorist until now, talking up the "woulds and coulds." Now I hope to have more "to dos and dids" to share with this list. Kirby PS: my class start date was almost pushed back last Saturday, when super high voltage lines fell off their towers and landed atop local delivery lines, causing a voltage spike our little surge protectors were never built to handle. I'll let an email from a staffer tell the rest: -------------------- So... Saturday we had quite an event here at FREEGEEK. An overloaded power grid caused transformers to explode throughout the area. One of the offending transformers exploded just a little too close for comfort, adjacent to our fine building. The fire department was quick to arrive on the scene to put out the towering inferno of a utility pole and sidewalk, and thankfully, no one was hurt. With no power and a state of bewilderment, we decided to close shop early. Subsequently our internal network was down until today (Monday) and our connection to the world beyond FREEGEEK was re-established around 3:30PM. We are back in action and will open as usual tomorrow (Tuesday).If you were unable to send to any lists during this time, try again. The lists are ready to hear from you (they got lonely). -Dave > -----Original Message----- > From: edu-sig-bounces@python.org [mailto:edu-sig-bounces@python.org] On > Behalf Of Jeffrey Elkner > Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2003 5:20 PM > To: Edu-sig > Cc: Steve Holden; Arthur > Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] re: PyCon 2004 Proposals for Presentations... > > Hi All, > > I just set up a Zwiki to help with planning for the Education Track at > PyCon 2004: > > http://linus.yorktown.arlington.k12.va.us/PyCon2004/EduTrack/ > > Please feel encouraged to add to it. I'm still a relative Zwiki newbie, > so any help in making it look nicer or work better would be *greatly* > appreciated. And the wonderful about wiki's is you don't even have to > ask for permission, just do it! > > From ajsiegel at optonline.net Thu Oct 2 22:49:22 2003 From: ajsiegel at optonline.net (Arthur) Date: Thu Oct 2 22:49:54 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Fw: [Visualpython-users] VPython and LiveZope References: Message-ID: <001b01c38958$fe2c0150$0c02a8c0@Arts> > Knoppix-based distros are pretty cool, just put the CD in and reboot. > Your machine loads the entire OS and whatever tools it provides from > the CD--nothing is installed to your hard drive. Good for test driving > tools or for making Linux-based applications available to Windows users > without forcing them to partition their hard drives. Its potential for educational use is already being tapped by the folks at FREEDUC Directory of free software for schools http://www.ofset.org/projects/edusoft/edusoft.html I had burned their ISO and it booted up on my portable flawlessly. I was amazed becuase RedHat8.0 couldn't deal with the Nvidia video driver on my Dell, while Knoppix effortless gave me a perfect XWindows screen on boot. > > Loading a real "batteries-included" Python on a Knoppix disk would be > great for demos, education, even the lost and forgotten Contagious Fun. > By building this as an ISO image we could encourage people to download > it (from the SIG page?) and distribute it at conferences and trade > shows to get a taste of what Python has to offer. I had recently posted a related wish/idea - a CD distribution that provided a more complete infrastructure than the standard distribution for education related apps. To include Numeric, pygame, wxPython, VPython, pyopengl, etc... The only problem I see with a bootable CD is that it must provide the apps as well as the infrastructure. So that in putting it together someone needs to either exercise some editorial control - and deal with the flak that that might entail, or else throw in the kitchen sink. The kitchen sink might end up being confusing, and of uneven quality. And ... what I didn't try to do when I booted from Freeduc is write and save a script. How is that handled? Is the hard disk file system mounted? If you can't wrtie and save a Python script, I am not sure it is a great solution, beyond - as you may be suggesting - as a form of a demo CD. With those concerns put on the table - I think its a great general concept. Particularly because it seems realistically doable without anyone quitting their jobs (and living on grits) or waiting 18 months to hear about a grant approval. Art From nagarjun at hbcse.tifr.res.in Fri Oct 3 00:40:54 2003 From: nagarjun at hbcse.tifr.res.in (Nagarjuna G.) Date: Fri Oct 3 00:41:12 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Fw: [Visualpython-users] VPython and LiveZope In-Reply-To: <001b01c38958$fe2c0150$0c02a8c0@Arts> References: <001b01c38958$fe2c0150$0c02a8c0@Arts> Message-ID: <3F7CFDD6.5060908@hbcse.tifr.res.in> Arthur wrote: > > >>Knoppix-based distros are pretty cool, just put the CD in and reboot. >>Your machine loads the entire OS and whatever tools it provides from >>the CD--nothing is installed to your hard drive. Good for test driving >>tools or for making Linux-based applications available to Windows users >>without forcing them to partition their hard drives. >> >> > >Its potential for educational use is already being tapped by the folks at > >FREEDUC >Directory of free software for schools > >http://www.ofset.org/projects/edusoft/edusoft.html > >I had burned their ISO and it booted up on my portable flawlessly. I was >amazed becuase RedHat8.0 couldn't deal with the Nvidia video driver on my >Dell, while Knoppix effortless gave me a perfect XWindows screen on boot. > > >>Loading a real "batteries-included" Python on a Knoppix disk would be >>great for demos, education, even the lost and forgotten Contagious Fun. >> By building this as an ISO image we could encourage people to download >>it (from the SIG page?) and distribute it at conferences and trade >>shows to get a taste of what Python has to offer. >> >> > >I had recently posted a related wish/idea - a CD distribution that provided >a more complete infrastructure than the standard distribution for education >related apps. To include Numeric, pygame, wxPython, VPython, pyopengl, >etc... > >The only problem I see with a bootable CD is that it must provide the apps >as well as the infrastructure. So that in putting it together someone needs >to either exercise some editorial control - and deal with the flak that that >might entail, or else throw in the kitchen sink. The kitchen sink might end >up being confusing, and of uneven quality. > >And ... what I didn't try to do when I booted from Freeduc is write and >save a script. How is that handled? Is the hard disk file system mounted? > >If you can't wrtie and save a Python script, I am not sure it is a great >solution, beyond - as you may be suggesting - as a form of a demo CD. > > The knoppix CD as well as the Freeduc, wich is based on the former, both allow writes to disk by mounting the hardisk or removable disks with rw option. In India too we are creating a special CD for schools and colleges with good selection of software. Python and Zope needless to say will be there. We are also localizing some of the applications in Indian languages. Nagarjuna From ajsiegel at optonline.net Fri Oct 3 08:25:50 2003 From: ajsiegel at optonline.net (Arthur) Date: Fri Oct 3 08:26:03 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Fw: [Visualpython-users] VPython and LiveZope References: <001b01c38958$fe2c0150$0c02a8c0@Arts> <3F7CFDD6.5060908@hbcse.tifr.res.in> Message-ID: <000a01c389a9$7b4d07b0$0c02a8c0@Arts> Nagarjuna writes: > The knoppix CD as well as the Freeduc, wich is based on the former, both > allow writes to disk by mounting the hardisk or removable disks with rw > option. That solves that. > > In India too we are creating a special CD for schools and colleges with > good selection of software. Python and Zope needless to say will be > there. We are also localizing some of the applications in Indian > languages. Under what auspices? How are the editorial decisions made? Freeduc, in addition to their distribution, has a somewhat formal methodology for evaluating and classifying free educatoinal software. Though the methodology for selection of the actually distribution is unclear to me. Perhaps only because the effort is lead by some French folks, who insist on speaking in some some foreign language. The nerve. But the potential is intoxicating. We encourage Microsoft to subsidize machines to school systems which come with their Windows School Edition, or something. And boot them all with Knoppix. Delicious. Art From nagarjun at hbcse.tifr.res.in Fri Oct 3 12:24:48 2003 From: nagarjun at hbcse.tifr.res.in (Nagarjuna G.) Date: Fri Oct 3 13:21:06 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Fw: [Visualpython-users] VPython and LiveZope In-Reply-To: <000a01c389a9$7b4d07b0$0c02a8c0@Arts> References: <001b01c38958$fe2c0150$0c02a8c0@Arts> <3F7CFDD6.5060908@hbcse.tifr.res.in> <000a01c389a9$7b4d07b0$0c02a8c0@Arts> Message-ID: <3F7DA2D0.5000700@hbcse.tifr.res.in> Arthur wrote: > Nagarjuna writes: > > > >>The knoppix CD as well as the Freeduc, wich is based on the former, both >>allow writes to disk by mounting the hardisk or removable disks with rw >>option. >> >> > >That solves that. > > > >>In India too we are creating a special CD for schools and colleges with >>good selection of software. Python and Zope needless to say will be >>there. We are also localizing some of the applications in Indian >>languages. >> >> > >Under what auspices? How are the editorial decisions made? > > Presently the project has no formal support, working mostly with moral support. We are waiting to hear responses from different bodies including Indian Govt. Final decisions will be based on community feedback. The initial releases of the project will be under the auspices of Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (http://www.hbcse.tifr.res.in) where I work. Nagarjuna From delza at blastradius.com Fri Oct 3 13:37:07 2003 From: delza at blastradius.com (Dethe Elza) Date: Fri Oct 3 13:37:18 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Fw: [Visualpython-users] VPython and LiveZope In-Reply-To: <001b01c38958$fe2c0150$0c02a8c0@Arts> Message-ID: <35B46E78-F5C8-11D7-8F83-0003939B59E8@blastradius.com> Arthur wrote: > The only problem I see with a bootable CD is that it must provide the > apps > as well as the infrastructure. So that in putting it together someone > needs > to either exercise some editorial control - and deal with the flak > that that > might entail, or else throw in the kitchen sink. The kitchen sink > might end > up being confusing, and of uneven quality. I think the kitchen sink approach is good, with some serious attention given to presentation, layout of desktop icons, menus, etc. Put it all in and give emphasis to the more polished work. > And ... what I didn't try to do when I booted from Freeduc is write > and > save a script. How is that handled? Is the hard disk file system > mounted? I believe that the hard drive *can* be mounted, or you can use FTP/WebDAV etc. for saving work. The solution used to be to save your work on a floppy, now it seems to be to use a networked drive. > If you can't wrtie and save a Python script, I am not sure it is a > great > solution, beyond - as you may be suggesting - as a form of a demo CD. Yes, that is more limiting, although you could still play pygames %-) > With those concerns put on the table - I think its a great general > concept. > Particularly because it seems realistically doable without anyone > quitting > their jobs (and living on grits) or waiting 18 months to hear about a > grant > approval. And there are some ISO images which contain very good starts on this. Could you post URLs to some of the resources you've explored? How does one modify an ISO image to create a new bootable CD? --Dethe From ajsiegel at optonline.net Sat Oct 4 10:35:46 2003 From: ajsiegel at optonline.net (Arthur) Date: Sat Oct 4 10:41:11 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Fw: [Visualpython-users] VPython and LiveZope References: <35B46E78-F5C8-11D7-8F83-0003939B59E8@blastradius.com> Message-ID: <000e01c38a84$cccd2b20$0c02a8c0@Arts> From: "Dethe Elza" > I think the kitchen sink approach is good, with some serious attention > given to presentation, layout of desktop icons, menus, etc. Put it all > in and give emphasis to the more polished work. Sounds like a plan. > > I believe that the hard drive *can* be mounted, or you can use > FTP/WebDAV etc. for saving work. The solution used to be to save >your work on a floppy, now it seems to be to use a networked drive. Good enough. > > Yes, that is more limiting, although you could still play pygames %-) I see the %-). But... At the PyCon presentation on Teaching Programming with PyGame, time was spent explaining the rules and regs developed around the program. Creating games in school: Good Playing games in school: Bad "Testing" games created in school, during school: Gray Area But there was a serious eye on theses issues, and pretty clear rules and regs. Python for the Fun of It and Python in Education are in my mind both worthwhile - but quite distinct - endeavors. "MyKnoppix" would probably be of little interest to the general population of "kids". Whatever it is it is, I would hope it to be - firstly - a Teachers Edition As such, I believe it would be dense with interesting resources to explore. Since I am actually quite serious about exploring this, I do need to ask... Are we on the same page - to a reasonable extent? > And there are some ISO images which contain very good starts on this. I'm sure. > Could you post URLs to some of the resources you've explored? The Freeduc CVS and FTP site to work on the packages, ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/ofset ). And I do intend - but have not yet explored - the LiveZope Knoppix """ The new version LiveZope-0.1.2.iso is put in the web site: ftp://math.cgu.edu.tw/pub/KNOPPIX """ And to wander a bit, there was this exchange in the orignal visual-python list post that I had forwarded Bruce Sherwood > > Your development may be very important, because many people have wanted > > to be able to run VPython programs in a browser. Is that what you > > have achieved? Can this work in other browsers? chu-ching huang > I purpose to integrate the Vpython codes into Zope server but no achieved. Is chu-ching saying that he can web enable VPython by a patch to Zope? Me want! > How does one modify an ISO image to create a new bootable CD? As to the details, I'm clueless. I can't believe there is too much to confront here, though. > > --Dethe Art From guido at python.org Sat Oct 4 13:07:26 2003 From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum) Date: Sat Oct 4 13:08:39 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Wanted: Head First Python author Message-ID: <200310041707.h94H7QK09548@12-236-54-216.client.attbi.com> I brought the idea of Head First Python up with O'Reilly, and they're at least lukewarm. I think if the right author presented him/herself they might warm up to the idea a lot more. A few people here showed interest, but I intentionally didn't jot down their names (I have no time to head this particular effort myself and am trying to stay out of the loop). But if you think you could be the lead on the author team and can make a convincing case to O'Reilly, please write me and I'll introduce you to Jonathan Gennick. If you'd like to participate but not as a lead, please post here so others know about your interest. --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/) From ajsiegel at optonline.net Sun Oct 5 08:54:33 2003 From: ajsiegel at optonline.net (Arthur) Date: Sun Oct 5 08:54:48 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] politics,again References: <35B46E78-F5C8-11D7-8F83-0003939B59E8@blastradius.com> <000e01c38a84$cccd2b20$0c02a8c0@Arts> Message-ID: <000701c38b3f$d32f9fa0$0c02a8c0@Arts> No avoiding the "big picture" political issues. Disturbing - to say the least. A innocent browse to http://www.knoppix.org/ produces: """Closed because of "Software-Patents" """ and a referal to http://swpat.ffli.org for more information. I know that Laura Creighton has been active in Sweden in trying to get this issue addressed - or bill defeated, or sufficiently toned down. Me - I'm confused. On one hand I'm understanding that the bill being considered in Europre is US style protections. But little of the extreme ramifications being discussed in Eutrope in lobbying for defeat of the legislation are in effect in the US -e.g., collecting license fees on "progress bars", etc. It is protrayed as an issue of Big Companies using the pending new law to prey on others and drive them from business. But where were the laws that might have protected the innovators behind the Speadsheet or Internet Browser from being ripped off by Microsoft and driven from businesses that they effectively created? I guess laws strong enough to do that would also have created monopolies - and we would be cowering before Lotus instead of Microsoft. No simple answers is probably the answer. Shouldn't folks be entitled to put conditions on the issuance of their intellectual property - even if is just the GPL? Isn't that what we are telling SCO? Not expressing an opinion - just confusion. Fundamental confusion. And frustration that the net effect of this wrangling is Knoppix closed for business - at least temporarity Just when I needed them. Art From cs1spw at bath.ac.uk Sun Oct 5 09:27:41 2003 From: cs1spw at bath.ac.uk (Simon Willison) Date: Sun Oct 5 09:26:40 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] politics,again In-Reply-To: <000701c38b3f$d32f9fa0$0c02a8c0@Arts> References: <35B46E78-F5C8-11D7-8F83-0003939B59E8@blastradius.com> <000e01c38a84$cccd2b20$0c02a8c0@Arts> <000701c38b3f$d32f9fa0$0c02a8c0@Arts> Message-ID: <3F801C4D.4070603@bath.ac.uk> Arthur wrote: > But where were the laws that might have protected the innovators behind the > Speadsheet or Internet Browser from being ripped off by Microsoft and driven > from businesses that they effectively created? I guess laws strong enough to > do that would also have created monopolies - and we would be cowering before > Lotus instead of Microsoft. No simple answers is probably the answer. Bill Gates, in 1991: "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. I feel certain that some large company will patent some obvious thing related to interface, object orientation, algorithm, application extension or other crucial technique. If we assume this company has no need of any of our patents then they have a 17-year right to take as much of our profits as they want. The solution to this is patent exchanges with large companies and patenting as much as we can. Amazingly we havn't done any patent exchanges tha I am aware of. Amazingly we havn't found a way to use our licensing position to avoid having our own customers cause patent problems for us. I know these aren't simply problems but they deserve more effort by both Legal and other groups. For example we need to do a patent exchange with HP as part of our new relationship. In many application categories straighforward thinking ahead allows you to come up with patentable ideas." The laws were there, but early software developers were too ethical to use them. Cheers, Simon Willison http://simon.incutio.com/ From lac at strakt.com Sun Oct 5 11:06:50 2003 From: lac at strakt.com (Laura Creighton) Date: Sun Oct 5 11:07:25 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] politics,again In-Reply-To: Message from Arthur of "Sun, 05 Oct 2003 08:54:33 EDT." <000701c38b3f$d32f9fa0$0c02a8c0@Arts> References: <35B46E78-F5C8-11D7-8F83-0003939B59E8@blastradius.com> <000e01c38a84$cccd2b20$0c02a8c0@Arts> <000701c38b3f$d32f9fa0$0c02a8c0@Arts> Message-ID: <200310051506.h95F6oh9003714@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> In a message of Sun, 05 Oct 2003 08:54:33 EDT, Arthur writes: >No avoiding the "big picture" political issues. > >Disturbing - to say the least. > >A innocent browse to http://www.knoppix.org/ produces: > >"""Closed because of "Software-Patents" """ > >and a referal to http://swpat.ffli.org for more information. > >I know that Laura Creighton has been active in Sweden in trying to get th >is >issue addressed - or bill defeated, or sufficiently toned down. Right now we got a terrific set of ammendments. Go to www.ffii.org and see why I want the current law passed, not failed. > >Me - I'm confused. On one hand I'm understanding that the bill being >considered in Europre is US style protections. But little of the extreme >ramifications being discussed in Eutrope in lobbying for defeat of the >legislation are in effect in the US -e.g., collecting license fees on >"progress bars", etc. YOu've been hanging out in the wrong newsgroups. Go to www.ffii.org and find some there and you will have all of such debate as you could ever desire. > >It is protrayed as an issue of Big Companies using the pending new law to >prey on others and drive them from business. > >But where were the laws that might have protected the innovators behind t >he >Speadsheet or Internet Browser from being ripped off by Microsoft and dri >ven >from businesses that they effectively created? I guess laws strong enough > to >do that would also have created monopolies - and we would be cowering bef >ore >Lotus instead of Microsoft. No simple answers is probably the answer. > >Shouldn't folks be entitled to put conditions on the issuance of their >intellectual property - even if is just the GPL? Isn't that what we are >telling SCO? > >Not expressing an opinion - just confusion. Fundamental confusion. >And frustration that the net effect of this wrangling is Knoppix closed f >or >business - at least temporarity > >Just when I needed them. > >Art We didn't know about Koppix as far a I know. (I just got back from Berlin), and wow do I have mail. Come over to an ffii list -- bxl if you want one that I am active with, and ask your questions there and make a report. We will get you writing press releases if you aren't careful. Do you know Seth Jackson? He is in NYC and organasing US resistence there. So is the EFF eff.org. We need volunteers for pretty much everthing native English speakers especially welcome. Laura (working on this, but working on PyPy too ....) From mats at laplaza.org Sun Oct 5 12:41:28 2003 From: mats at laplaza.org (Mats Wichmann) Date: Sun Oct 5 12:42:00 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] politics,again In-Reply-To: <000701c38b3f$d32f9fa0$0c02a8c0@Arts> References: <35B46E78-F5C8-11D7-8F83-0003939B59E8@blastradius.com> <000e01c38a84$cccd2b20$0c02a8c0@Arts> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.1.20031005103834.02369c80@mail.laplaza.org> >And frustration that the net effect of this wrangling is Knoppix closed for >business - at least temporarity > >Just when I needed them. A number of websites did this to their "home page" but the projects are still there, including Knoppix. The page has a link to the regular homepage if you look carefully. From ajsiegel at optonline.net Sun Oct 5 12:20:51 2003 From: ajsiegel at optonline.net (Arthur) Date: Sun Oct 5 12:53:22 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] politics,again References: <35B46E78-F5C8-11D7-8F83-0003939B59E8@blastradius.com> <000e01c38a84$cccd2b20$0c02a8c0@Arts> <000701c38b3f$d32f9fa0$0c02a8c0@Arts> <200310051506.h95F6oh9003714@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> Message-ID: <000601c38b5c$a4fcf840$0c02a8c0@Arts> From: "Laura Creighton" > Right now we got a terrific set of ammendments. Go to www.ffii.org and > see why I want the current law passed, not failed. Good news. Sounds like quite an accomplishment to get things turned around that fundamenatlly. > > YOu've been hanging out in the wrong newsgroups. Go to www.ffii.org > and find some there and you will have all of such debate as you could > ever desire. More than I can handle, in fact. I just don't have the basics enough under my belt to follow it. And then there is the whole layer of EU specific politics on top of it. I'll stay on the sidelines, as to the specifics. But I do think I have a sense of the "market" here. And would argue that innovation, and efforts toward innovation, are in fact being most dramatically impacted by peoples *inability* to protect and lay claim to their innovative work. It has been proved time and time again that the bigger players (read Micosoft) will lay back, let innovative actors act and innovative sectors take shape, and - once established - swoop it up - lock, stock and barrel - after the hard stuff has been done. By branding it and giving it a prettier GUI or something This pattern has repeated itself so often that it seems foolhardy, at this point, to expect it will be otherwise. And smart people don't stay foolhardy. And go to other things, or 'join-up', as it were. Ascetics carry on. But many of the capable don't see writing innovative software as a "calling" - it that sense. Anything of this addressed in the revised legislation? Is it addressable? Is it laws intended to protect us from monopolies that I should be lookingt toward, rather than patent or copyright laws. If so, trouble. The US government "won" the case against Micosoft? I wonder what a loss would have looked like. Part of this new religion on my part is that I happen to be working in a little corner of the universe with a piece of business/accounting software that Microsoft recently brought to market. And I know enough about this stuff to understand what a piece of crap it truly is. They brought it to mrket by buying a company grown from scratch, by a North Dakota farm boy. It was pretty decent stuff- too decent, too high end for the market Microsoft is targeting - the Quickbooks/Peachtree market . So they take the product they bought - and rip some guts out of it so that they wouldn't be giving away too much for too little. What results from haphazardly ripping some guts out of a coherent piece of software? Obviously, an incoherent piece of software. An arrogant piece of software. A piece of arrogant, crappy software selling - I'm sure - like hotcakes. I have been radicalized. And not sure where to go with it. Art From mats at laplaza.org Sun Oct 5 12:55:51 2003 From: mats at laplaza.org (Mats Wichmann) Date: Sun Oct 5 12:56:18 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Fw: [Visualpython-users] VPython and LiveZope In-Reply-To: <35B46E78-F5C8-11D7-8F83-0003939B59E8@blastradius.com> References: <001b01c38958$fe2c0150$0c02a8c0@Arts> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.1.20031005105123.0237c728@mail.laplaza.org> >And there are some ISO images which contain very good starts on this. >Could you post URLs to some of the resources you've explored? How does >one modify an ISO image to create a new bootable CD? There's a page on this at the Knoppix site ("Remastering HOWTO"). I've played some with Knoppix, and I'm about to do a hands-on tutorial using it (nothing to do with Python, I'm afraid). The easiest way to clear space for adding new stuff - the current distributions are pretty full - seems to be to remove OpenOffice, which hasn't been needed by anything I want to do. Also, an alternative to mounting a hard disk partition is to use the ever more common USB-based memory devices. This makes for a nice solution for a one-off classroom setup, where you can completely control what the students run, and the underlying system is not modified in any way; yet there's a way to save off key data. Of course, if students bring their own laptop they're free to mount the hard drive and save stuff over there. From missive at hotmail.com Sun Oct 5 13:03:29 2003 From: missive at hotmail.com (Lee Harr) Date: Sun Oct 5 13:03:33 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Re: politics,again Message-ID: >Me - I'm confused. > Me too. I have been thinking about this quite a bit lately. I think the biggest problem I have is that most of the software patents I have read are descriptions of problems, rather than descriptions of the solutions to problems. In other words, these software patents are allowing people (corporations, really) to stake out entire problem spaces, and thereby prevent any innovation in solving the problems. _________________________________________________________________ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail From lac at strakt.com Sun Oct 5 16:28:08 2003 From: lac at strakt.com (Laura Creighton) Date: Sun Oct 5 16:28:59 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] politics,again In-Reply-To: Message from Mats Wichmann of "Sun, 05 Oct 2003 10:41:28 MDT." <5.1.0.14.1.20031005103834.02369c80@mail.laplaza.org> References: <35B46E78-F5C8-11D7-8F83-0003939B59E8@blastradius.com> <000e01c38a84$cccd2b20$0c02a8c0@Arts> <5.1.0.14.1.20031005103834.02369c80@mail.laplaza.org> Message-ID: <200310052028.h95KS8h9004566@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> In a message of Sun, 05 Oct 2003 10:41:28 MDT, Mats Wichmann writes: > > >And frustration that the net effect of this wrangling is Knoppix closed > for > >business - at least temporarity > > > >Just when I needed them. > >A number of websites did this to their "home page" but the >projects are still there, including Knoppix. The page >has a link to the regular homepage if you look carefully. > Aha, our protest is working properly, then. We are shutting down websites to draw attention to what could happen if the EU allows software patents. Too bad you don't have an EU government official to write to, saying that you don't want software to be patentable.... You are still welcome to come by and write some for us to ship to our officials, of course... :-) Laura From 2vwihgpp at webexcel.co.uk Sun Oct 5 22:53:02 2003 From: 2vwihgpp at webexcel.co.uk (Geoffrey Leary) Date: Sun Oct 5 20:55:35 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] YOUR AD SEiT TO MILnIONS myrscm nasjuwen Message-ID: <0$$b623m0-a8@y4hh.zkq2.7k> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/edu-sig/attachments/20031006/c12f91dc/attachment.html From mats at laplaza.org Sun Oct 5 13:38:55 2003 From: mats at laplaza.org (Mats Wichmann) Date: Mon Oct 6 09:03:50 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Re: politics,again In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.1.20031005111911.02381e10@mail.laplaza.org> At 05:03 PM 10/5/2003 +0000, Lee Harr wrote: >>Me - I'm confused. > >Me too. I have been thinking about this quite a bit lately. I think the >biggest problem I have is that most of the software patents I have >read are descriptions of problems, rather than descriptions of the >solutions to problems. In other words, these software patents are >allowing people (corporations, really) to stake out entire problem >spaces, and thereby prevent any innovation in solving the problems. Someone made an excellent statement, which I think bears repeating: Patents are not a "natural right", they are an instrument of economic policy. And that policy can, and should, be written in a way such that it actually fosters economic growth. I'm not at all convinced (but then I'm not the decision maker here) that eliminating all software patents would in any way decrease innovation and growth in the software business, probably the opposite. The recent trend has been for larger companies to build huge patent portfolios. I know my current employer keeps encouraging all engineers to file patent applications on, well, everything. But mostly, these portfolios don't generate revenue, they become defensive. If someone threatens a patent claim, a trade (formal or informal) is brokered. This has made a particularly repugnant entity very powerful at least in the US: companies holding one or more patents, but with no products at all. Since they produce nothing, there's nothing they can infringe, and thus they're immune to the usual trading scheme. Somehow I can't imagine encouraging leeches like this is the situation the patent policy was intended to foster. But I guess we're wondering (way) off the charter of the list... From goodmansond at yahoo.com Mon Oct 6 10:43:56 2003 From: goodmansond at yahoo.com (Dean Goodmanson) Date: Mon Oct 6 10:44:00 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] FWD: Mktg, College Board Recommendations Message-ID: <20031006144356.26575.qmail@web21104.mail.yahoo.com> http://www.pythonology.org/pipermail/marketing-python/2003-October/005257.html __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com From dethe.elza at blastradius.com Mon Oct 6 11:58:12 2003 From: dethe.elza at blastradius.com (Dethe Elza) Date: Mon Oct 6 11:58:21 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] politics,again In-Reply-To: <000701c38b3f$d32f9fa0$0c02a8c0@Arts> Message-ID: On Sunday, October 5, 2003, at 05:54 AM, Arthur wrote: > But where were the laws that might have protected the innovators > behind the > Speadsheet or Internet Browser from being ripped off by Microsoft and > driven > from businesses that they effectively created? Laws can't protect small companies or individuals from large companies because enforcing the law takes money. Lots of money, which the big companies have in abundance (along with hot and cold running corporate lawyers). Not to mention that laws are financed (and in some cases more or less written by) the large companies. That's the situation in the US. Perhaps in Europe there is a way to ensure that money doesn't talk? --Dethe From ajs at ix.netcom.com Mon Oct 6 15:16:52 2003 From: ajs at ix.netcom.com (Arthur) Date: Mon Oct 6 15:17:04 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] politics,again References: Message-ID: <001801c38c3e$66ef84e0$b3421f43@Arts> From: "Dethe Elza" > On Sunday, October 5, 2003, at 05:54 AM, Arthur wrote: > > > But where were the laws that might have protected the innovators > > behind the > > Speadsheet or Internet Browser from being ripped off by Microsoft and > > driven > > from businesses that they effectively created? > > Laws can't protect small companies or individuals from large companies > because enforcing the law takes money. Lots of money, which the big > companies have in abundance (along with hot and cold running corporate > lawyers). Not to mention that laws are financed (and in some cases > more or less written by) the large companies. That's the situation in > the US. Perhaps in Europe there is a way to ensure that money doesn't > talk? Yes, there is a business as usual aspect to some of what Microsoft is able to do. A cash position of $zillions does tend to help one's legal position. What is noteworthy is Microsoft's ability to "absorb" technology developed by Lotus, by Netscape, by Novell, by Sun, etc. Companies that can put up a decent fight. I suspect money talks in Europe, at least as much as here - perhaps with more subtlety... but that's another discussion. And in most places $ doesn't talk, it just rules - outright.. So I find it hard to point fingers, in that respect. Art From dethe.elza at blastradius.com Mon Oct 6 15:34:16 2003 From: dethe.elza at blastradius.com (Dethe Elza) Date: Mon Oct 6 15:34:24 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Fw: [Visualpython-users] VPython and LiveZope In-Reply-To: <000e01c38a84$cccd2b20$0c02a8c0@Arts> Message-ID: <129AFD2A-F834-11D7-A3A0-0003939B59E8@blastradius.com> Arthur wrote: > Python for the Fun of It > and > Python in Education > are in my mind both worthwhile - but quite distinct - endeavors. [...] > Since I am actually quite serious about exploring this, I do need to > ask... > Are we on the same page - to a reasonable extent? To a reasonable extent. I am not teaching python right now, but I would like to organize a school club or after-school activity for kids who are interested in learning more about computers. I think that PyGame will be a big part of that. My daughter is also getting to be old enough to try her hand at simple programming, so we are trying to design a game together. Games tend to push the envelope of computing, especially for user interfaces, and nearly every aspect of computer science must be addressed in the context of a game, so they are great learning tools. And there is nothing like games to hold attention or motivate kids. All that said, I certainly understand the constraints that educators face working within the school system, and I don't envy them. > Bruce Sherwood >>> Your development may be very important, because many people have >>> wanted >>> to be able to run VPython programs in a browser. Is that what you >>> have achieved? Can this work in other browsers? > > chu-ching huang >> I purpose to integrate the Vpython codes into Zope server but no >> achieved. > > Is chu-ching saying that he can web enable VPython by a patch to Zope? > Me want! I seriously doubt that this is what he is saying. Embedding VPython into the Zope server could allow 3D visualization of server logs, but would have *no* effect on the browser. OK, that's not entirely true--VPython can generate 2D snapshots and serve those over the server, or perhaps generate VRML renderings? But embedding even a simple 3D rendering engine into a browser is an extremely hairy endeavor. We are still a long way from useful 3D on the web. --Dethe From dethe.elza at blastradius.com Mon Oct 6 15:36:19 2003 From: dethe.elza at blastradius.com (Dethe Elza) Date: Mon Oct 6 15:36:23 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Fw: [Visualpython-users] VPython and LiveZope In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.1.20031005105123.0237c728@mail.laplaza.org> Message-ID: <5BCF3D56-F834-11D7-A3A0-0003939B59E8@blastradius.com> Mats Wichmann wrote: > >And there are some ISO images which contain very good starts on this. > >Could you post URLs to some of the resources you've explored? How > does > >one modify an ISO image to create a new bootable CD? > > There's a page on this at the Knoppix site ("Remastering HOWTO"). Thanks, I guess I should have poked around more. I'll be looking forward to your tutorial. --Dethe From ajsiegel at optonline.net Mon Oct 6 12:48:58 2003 From: ajsiegel at optonline.net (Arthur) Date: Mon Oct 6 21:14:11 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] FW: Vpython and LiveZope Message-ID: <3F819CFA.3000605@optonline.com> Dethe writes: > And there is nothing like games to hold attention or motivate kids. Out of the box Knoppix - from which I am sending - has a menu category "edutainment". The mathematics submenu has one entry - "KGeo (Interactive Geometry)" - which might be the next best thing to you know what. Games themselves are a separate menu category. Knoppix is quite, quite nice. And there is a small logo on boot in the lower right of the screen. A "K" in a circle. Means it's kosher - where I come from. Now if I get a machine with two writeable CDs and train Knoppix to retrieve and burn Knoppix when it boots -do I effectively taken over the world? Or is there more to it than that. ;) Getting LiveZope - which I am anxious to see - is a problem. The transfer rate I am getting from the server on which it sits is no better than 5kb, and it bombs if I try to run it overnight. I will contact the author for suggestions. Art From jason.cunliffe at verizon.net Wed Oct 8 15:34:36 2003 From: jason.cunliffe at verizon.net (Jason Cunliffe) Date: Wed Oct 8 15:33:15 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Wanted: Head First Python author References: <200310041707.h94H7QK09548@12-236-54-216.client.attbi.com> Message-ID: <00b101c38dd3$354472c0$6501a8c0@vaio> Hello. Yes that's some encouraging news. I'd like to contribute, but not as lead author. I can offer: - Graphic skills for illustrating Head First Python schematics [ Work closely, intelligently with lead author[s] to produce suitable art & layout] - Experienced QuarkXpress, Photoshop, Illustrator etc etc - 10 years+ experience in book and magazine design & production [Need to make sure that in this kind of book text and illustration are really in sync, layed out in good order for teh rader with true understanding of content] - love of Python and edu-sig [of course] regards Jason Cunliffe jasonic@nomadics.org 84 Henry Street Brooklyn NY 11201 718 422-1078 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Guido van Rossum" To: Sent: Saturday, October 04, 2003 1:07 PM Subject: [Edu-sig] Wanted: Head First Python author > I brought the idea of Head First Python up with O'Reilly, and they're > at least lukewarm. I think if the right author presented him/herself > they might warm up to the idea a lot more. A few people here showed > interest, but I intentionally didn't jot down their names (I have no > time to head this particular effort myself and am trying to stay out > of the loop). But if you think you could be the lead on the author > team and can make a convincing case to O'Reilly, please write me and > I'll introduce you to Jonathan Gennick. If you'd like to participate > but not as a lead, please post here so others know about your > interest. > > --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/) From guido at python.org Wed Oct 8 15:38:24 2003 From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum) Date: Wed Oct 8 15:38:46 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Wanted: Head First Python author In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 08 Oct 2003 15:34:36 EDT." <00b101c38dd3$354472c0$6501a8c0@vaio> References: <200310041707.h94H7QK09548@12-236-54-216.client.attbi.com> <00b101c38dd3$354472c0$6501a8c0@vaio> Message-ID: <200310081938.h98JcOu23810@12-236-54-216.client.attbi.com> Toby Donaldson is heading the effort now. It's far from clear whether O'Reilly is interested in publishing this; maybe the team's first task ought to be a strategy for convincing O'Reilly (a) that this is the right team, and (b) that there is sufficient demand. --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/) From jeff at elkner.net Thu Oct 9 18:09:36 2003 From: jeff at elkner.net (Jeffrey Elkner) Date: Thu Oct 9 18:05:09 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Please add yourself to the wiki... Message-ID: <1065737376.3527.9.camel@blake.careercenter.arlington.k12.va.us> Hi All, I've added a link to the wiki: http://linus.yorktown.arlington.k12.va.us/PyCon2004/EduTrack/FrontPage called "IllBeThere", intended for folks who think they will be coming to PyCon2004 and who are interested in a Python in Education Track. *Please* add yourself to this page, together with a brief description of your interests, if you are considering participating in the Edu track at the conference. I am hoping to get a sense of who is interested and what kinds of topics folks would like to see discussed. The conference could potentially be a great place for those of us using Python in education to learn from each other and to plan for ways to help further develop Python's use in education. Thanks! -- Jeffrey Elkner Open Book Project From jeff at elkner.net Thu Oct 9 18:20:09 2003 From: jeff at elkner.net (Jeffrey Elkner) Date: Thu Oct 9 18:15:42 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] GvR ready for prime time... Message-ID: <1065738009.3527.21.camel@blake.careercenter.arlington.k12.va.us> I just finished using Guido van Robot (http://gvr.sf.net) with my intro classes this year, and it was a whole heap of fun! GvR is a "Pythonic" improvement of the teaching language Karel the Robot, and using it has once again renewed my appreciation for the Pythonic way of doing things. GvR was developed by my former students, Paul Carduner, Donald Oellerich, and Waseem Daher, under the guidance of Python programmer Steve Howell. It has matured to the point where it is robust enough for classroom use (it didn't crash once with 40 students using it for two weeks, and we discovered only one small display bug, which Paul has already fixed). And thanks to Roger Frank's excellent lessons (http://gvr.sourceforge.net/lessons/rfrank), it comes with teaching materials ready to use. It does not currently run under Windows (wxPython display issues), but we have plans to fix that this year. May others find as fun to use as I have! -- Jeffrey Elkner Open Book Project From dyoo at hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu Thu Oct 9 18:28:50 2003 From: dyoo at hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu (Danny Yoo) Date: Thu Oct 9 18:28:55 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] GvR ready for prime time... In-Reply-To: <1065738009.3527.21.camel@blake.careercenter.arlington.k12.va.us> Message-ID: On Thu, 9 Oct 2003, Jeffrey Elkner wrote: > I just finished using Guido van Robot (http://gvr.sf.net) with my intro > classes this year, and it was a whole heap of fun! Very cute! Mind if I forward this to Python-Tutor as well? From H.FANGOHR at soton.ac.uk Fri Oct 10 03:21:08 2003 From: H.FANGOHR at soton.ac.uk (Hans Fangohr) Date: Fri Oct 10 03:22:05 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] GvR ready for prime time... In-Reply-To: <1065738009.3527.21.camel@blake.careercenter.arlington.k12.va.us> References: <1065738009.3527.21.camel@blake.careercenter.arlington.k12.va.us> Message-ID: Hi Jeffrey, very nice indeed. I pointed some people working on genetic algorithms to this. They currently use a 'language' dominated by integer numbers to code actions of an object similar to 'Guido the Robot'. I think they might profit from using GvR, or at least being inspired by it. Cheers, Hans On Thu, 9 Oct 2003, Jeffrey Elkner wrote: > I just finished using Guido van Robot (http://gvr.sf.net) with my intro > classes this year, and it was a whole heap of fun! > > GvR is a "Pythonic" improvement of the teaching language Karel the > Robot, and using it has once again renewed my appreciation for the > Pythonic way of doing things. > > GvR was developed by my former students, Paul Carduner, Donald > Oellerich, and Waseem Daher, under the guidance of Python programmer > Steve Howell. It has matured to the point where it is robust enough for > classroom use (it didn't crash once with 40 students using it for two > weeks, and we discovered only one small display bug, which Paul has > already fixed). > > And thanks to Roger Frank's excellent lessons > (http://gvr.sourceforge.net/lessons/rfrank), it comes with teaching > materials ready to use. > > It does not currently run under Windows (wxPython display issues), but > we have plans to fix that this year. > > May others find as fun to use as I have! > > -- > Jeffrey Elkner > Open Book Project > > > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig@python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > ------------------------------------------------- Dr Hans Fangohr Computational Engineering & Design Research Group School of Engineering Sciences University of Southampton Southampton, SO17 1BJ United Kingdom Location: Building 25, Room 1033 phone : +44 (0) 23 8059 8345 fax : +44 (0) 23 8059 7082 email : fangohr@soton.ac.uk ------------------------------------------------- From urnerk at qwest.net Fri Oct 10 18:22:52 2003 From: urnerk at qwest.net (Kirby Urner) Date: Fri Oct 10 18:22:51 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Python for homeschoolers Message-ID: My Python + Geometry class for Python homeschoolers is going OK. I'm at a ramshackle warehouse full of used computers being reassembled into "freekboxes" by volunteers (who get a freekbox for their services). The classroom consists of diskless workstations slaved to a server, usually to 'obsidian' (the server name) a debian stable, but alternatively to 'raka', a debian unstable. raka hosts includes Python2.3 as well as Povray 3.5 (yay!). I've learned that you need to start idle in an xterm with the -n switch if you want multiple users to share it (I have about 8 users). This was my second 1.5 hour class today. Last week focused on range() -- range(a), range(a,b), range(a,b,c) options -- and then we used the list output of that built-in to start investigating lists (indexing, slicing). Then we talked about the Pythagorean Theorem and Pythagorean triples, as up ahead we want to look at a program for generating said triples. This will require developing gcd(), because similar triangles don't count. Today we moved on the strings, tuples and dictionaries, using dir() and help() to get some clues about what these objects might do. I delivered this talk on objects, with methods and attributes, focusing on mydog.mood and mydog.bark() etc. Went back to lists to play with mylist.sort() and mylist.reverse() -- as examples of object.method() syntax in action. But the class started with hands-on play using StrangeAttractors (not yet on the market) and then looking at a PNG graphics file showing this very toy, generated from Povray. We pulled of the pov file and talked about the cylinder() command, the role of coordinates. Other geometry was 'poly-gon' versus 'poly-hedron' (knees vs. faces for those of you into etymologies). These are middle-school aged kids, mostly boys, but one girl, and one middle aged woman (the mom of one of the boys). Getting the files uploaded took a fair amount of prep time. I'm shelling in using OpenSSH on cygwin (mostly), leapfrogging from one server to another within FreeGeek. sftp is cumbersome to use, and the connection gets dropped for no apparent reason. In sum (topics so far): range() naming objects e.g. mylist = range(10,0,-1) the list object triangles (as objects) Pythagorean Theorem (special attributes of right triangles) data structures: lists, dictionaries, tuples, strings object.attribute and object.method() syntax (mydog.bark(3)) coordinate geometry -- (x,y,z) tuples as named points in a dictionary polygons/polyhedra -- tuples of named points, pairs of point names as edges Platonic Polyhedra buckminsterfullerene (truncated icosahedron) and the allotropes of carbon Kirby From urnerk at qwest.net Sat Oct 11 13:52:45 2003 From: urnerk at qwest.net (Kirby Urner) Date: Sat Oct 11 13:52:42 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Python for homeschoolers In-Reply-To: Message-ID: For another summary of my Python + Geometry class, see: http://www.mathforum.org/epigone/math-teach/winsnurkhah More of my standard rap (nothing very new, if you've read my stuff before, but still groundbreaking in the grander scheme of things, or so I like to imagine). Kirby From ajsiegel at optonline.net Sun Oct 12 10:06:15 2003 From: ajsiegel at optonline.net (Arthur) Date: Sun Oct 12 07:06:23 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] re: Python for homeschoolers Message-ID: <000701c390c9$fff52cf0$1a02a8c0@MarvaConsulting.local> Kirby writes - >My Python + Geometry class for Python homeschoolers is going OK. A Python + Geometry class not using PyGeo. Ouch. Advantages - Ability to draw (in 3d, betond Flatland) from the interactive prompt. Live, realtime interactivity. Fly-by, rotate, dynamically manipulate, etc. one's constructions. Maybe most importantly - stay *in* Python. No need to introduce Povray semantics to folks who are getting their first taste of programming in Python. Give them a break. And export to Povray directly from PyGeo if one wants a "picture". Don't get it. Truly. And would be happy to work with you on correcting this oversight for future classes. ;) Art From gerrit at nl.linux.org Wed Oct 15 11:24:58 2003 From: gerrit at nl.linux.org (Gerrit Holl) Date: Wed Oct 15 11:25:09 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] java Message-ID: <20031015152458.GA4360@nl.linux.org> Hello, at least three universities in The Netherlands use Java to teach programming to non-CS-student. Is this bad? yours, Gerrit Holl. -- 282. If a slave say to his master: "You are not my master," if they convict him his master shall cut off his ear. -- 1780 BC, Hammurabi, Code of Law -- Asperger Syndroom - een persoonlijke benadering: http://people.nl.linux.org/~gerrit/ Kom in verzet tegen dit kabinet: http://www.sp.nl/ From liao at sandiego.edu Wed Oct 15 12:17:25 2003 From: liao at sandiego.edu (luby liao) Date: Wed Oct 15 12:11:26 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] java In-Reply-To: <20031015152458.GA4360@nl.linux.org> References: <20031015152458.GA4360@nl.linux.org> Message-ID: <3F8D7315.40903@sandiego.edu> Gerrit, do you know what unviersities? Are they important universities? What are their wisdom? cheers, Luby -- Luby Liao, Department of Math/CS, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA 92110 (619)260-4021(O), (858)452-7644(H), (619)260-4293(fax) 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogroves And the mome raths outgrabe -- L.C. >Hello, > >at least three universities in The Netherlands >use Java to teach programming to non-CS-student. > >Is this bad? > >yours, >Gerrit Holl. > > > From gerrit at nl.linux.org Wed Oct 15 12:26:29 2003 From: gerrit at nl.linux.org (Gerrit Holl) Date: Wed Oct 15 12:26:37 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] java In-Reply-To: <3F8D7315.40903@sandiego.edu> References: <20031015152458.GA4360@nl.linux.org> <3F8D7315.40903@sandiego.edu> Message-ID: <20031015162629.GA4604@nl.linux.org> luby liao wrote: > Gerrit, do you know what unviersities? Are they important > universities? What are their wisdom? cheers, Luby I am a physics student, and next year, I will be teached Java. The same is true for (at least) Chemists and Elektrotechnicians. I am at the University of Twente, and I know that the Vrije Universititeit also teaches programming with Java. I'm not sure whether the Universiteit van Amsterdam also uses Java to teach physisians programming. In The Netherlands, there is not a big difference between more and less important universities. My father (Ruby'ist) doesn't understand why universities do so. I think he is over-aggerating when he compares Java with Cobol, both being used in companies a lot, but I do understand that Java is lower-level so less useful in physics? yours, Gerrit. -- 190. If a man does not maintain a child that he has adopted as a son and reared with his other children, then his adopted son may return to his father's house. -- 1780 BC, Hammurabi, Code of Law -- Asperger Syndroom - een persoonlijke benadering: http://people.nl.linux.org/~gerrit/ Kom in verzet tegen dit kabinet: http://www.sp.nl/ From jason.cunliffe at verizon.net Wed Oct 15 13:02:38 2003 From: jason.cunliffe at verizon.net (Jason Cunliffe) Date: Wed Oct 15 13:01:32 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] java References: <20031015152458.GA4360@nl.linux.org> Message-ID: <007301c3933e$23979d20$6501a8c0@vaio> > at least three universities in The Netherlands > use Java to teach programming to non-CS-student. > > Is this bad? No - Not "bad".. [but it depends what you mean by bad] Learning any widely used computer language is a good thing, especially if it is well taught ;-) Learning several languages over time is even better ! An common argument is about which language makes a good beginning. Is this your first programming language ? What skills/experience/interest do you have now? When considering languages I think it is very important to consider the size and quality or community and resources around them. This social collaborative environment is as essential as the specific technical features. Python for example has a great community who contribute quality learning and code openly and generously. Java has some of that also, though perhaps more mixed up with commercial context. Java is very widely used, and increasingly so for sophisticated apps and frameworks for many communications and scientific software. Java-based tools can also be used with others very effectively. One example is Jython which offers a bridge between and benefits of both Java and Python. Java can be initially very verbose compared to some other languages. That is why many people prefer languages like Python or Ruby. Because they are considered more concise, more readable, more elegant, more fun, [insert-your-own-preference-here], etc. But beauty is in the eye of the maker, and the beholder. So many levels and ways of approaching progamming, that it is best to keep a very open mind to these issues. Experience will make it easier to decide what you like and why. Java syntax and features are very similar to a number of modern langauges. So even if you don't continue long with it, you will gain many valuable core skills you can apply elsewhere. An excellent book discussed here not long ago is "Head First Java". http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/hfjava/ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596004656/002-6665319-3533633?v=glance good luck - Jason From urnerk at qwest.net Wed Oct 15 13:20:39 2003 From: urnerk at qwest.net (Kirby Urner) Date: Wed Oct 15 13:20:27 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] java In-Reply-To: <20031015152458.GA4360@nl.linux.org> Message-ID: I think there's a trend in many US colleges and universities towards using dynamic languages for non-CS course, vs. the more static ones. Static languages require declaring variable types before use and are generally a lot stricter, and therefore take somewhat longer to learn. If I had to choose one over the other, I'd take Python over Java. Students would be more productive more quickly and it's easier to teach. Static languages include: Java, C, C++, C#, Pascal, ocaml Dynamic languages include: Python, Perl, Ruby, FoxPro That being said, Java is a capable, contemporary language and the skills one learns are transferable to other languages. For more readings see: http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=4639 http://altis.pycs.net/2003/05/02.html Kirby > -----Original Message----- > From: edu-sig-bounces+urnerk=qwest.net@python.org [mailto:edu-sig- > bounces+urnerk=qwest.net@python.org] On Behalf Of Gerrit Holl > Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 8:25 AM > To: edu-sig@python.org > Subject: [Edu-sig] java > > Hello, > > at least three universities in The Netherlands > use Java to teach programming to non-CS-student. > > Is this bad? > > yours, > Gerrit Holl. From jason.cunliffe at verizon.net Wed Oct 15 13:26:38 2003 From: jason.cunliffe at verizon.net (Jason Cunliffe) Date: Wed Oct 15 13:24:48 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] java - 2 examples References: <20031015152458.GA4360@nl.linux.org> <3F8D7315.40903@sandiego.edu> <20031015162629.GA4604@nl.linux.org> Message-ID: <008c01c39341$7e3892e0$6501a8c0@vaio> Two examples of very cool software written in Java for science student: JSyn http://www.softsynth.com/jsyn/ Vis-Ad http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/visad.html enjoy -Jason From dyoo at hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu Wed Oct 15 14:12:18 2003 From: dyoo at hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu (Danny Yoo) Date: Wed Oct 15 14:12:30 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] java In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Static languages require declaring variable types before use and are > generally a lot stricter, and therefore take somewhat longer to learn. [some text cut] > Static languages include: Java, C, C++, C#, Pascal, ocaml Hi Kirby, I do have to disagree about clumping OCaml in with those other languages. OCaml (and the ML languages) are strictly typed, but their type systems are much more intelligent than traditional "typed" languages. Unlike Java, C, C++, C#, and Pascal, OCaml will perform proper type inference; in almost all cases, types won't have to be explicitely written out. For example: (******) # let rec length list = if list = [] then 0 else 1 + length (List.tl list);; val length : 'a list -> int = (******) This length() function takes a list of any type, and knows that it'll return an integer. Nothing here requires the programmer to explicitly declare variable types -- it'll work on lists of strings just as well as on lists of integers. (******) # length ["hello"; "world"];; - : int = 2 # length [1;2;3;4;5];; - : int = 5 (******) And, like Python, OCaml's types will follow values, not names: (******) # let age = "forty-two";; val age : string = "forty-two" # let age = 42;; val age : int = 42 (******) OCaml has a lot of the good features of a "dynamic" language, including a interactive interpreter. And although its syntax is a little wacky, that shouldn't be an excuse to aggregate it with the likes of Java. *grin* > If I had to choose one over the other, I'd take Python over Java. > Students would be more productive more quickly and it's easier to teach. Yes, Python and OCaml are excellent alternatives to Java. Both present an environment where the cost of playing around with the language is very low --- their interactive interpreters allow for casual experimentation. Java, on the other hand, requires explicit compilation, so it's just not much fun to play with. My apologies for focusing on OCaml so much on this post; I'm still a bit brainwashed after reading Mark Jason Dominus's page on: http://perl.plover.com/yak/typing/typing.html *grin* Good luck to you! From urnerk at qwest.net Wed Oct 15 14:29:43 2003 From: urnerk at qwest.net (Kirby Urner) Date: Wed Oct 15 14:29:34 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] java In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > I do have to disagree about clumping OCaml in with those other languages. OK, thanks for the experience-based details. I just grabbed it from someone else's list of static languages. I've not used OCaml myself (just read some docs at one point). > This length() function takes a list of any type, and knows that it'll > return an integer. Nothing here requires the programmer to explicitly > declare variable types -- it'll work on lists of strings just as well as > on lists of integers. > > (******) > # length ["hello"; "world"];; > - : int = 2 > # length [1;2;3;4;5];; > - : int = 5 > (******) Well, this would be a feature of C# as well, in that the System.Array type has its built-in Length field, like Python's __len__ method, where the Array may be of various types, or of mixed type if you say its an array of object references. Yes, you have to declare the array type, but it's the same myarray.Length invocation every time. Isn't Java like this too? > > And, like Python, OCaml's types will follow values, not names: > > (******) > # let age = "forty-two";; > val age : string = "forty-two" > # let age = 42;; > val age : int = 42 > (******) > > OCaml has a lot of the good features of a "dynamic" language, including a > interactive interpreter. And although its syntax is a little wacky, that > shouldn't be an excuse to aggregate it with the likes of Java. *grin* > > > > If I had to choose one over the other, I'd take Python over Java. > > Students would be more productive more quickly and it's easier to teach. > > Yes, Python and OCaml are excellent alternatives to Java. Both present an > environment where the cost of playing around with the language is very low > --- their interactive interpreters allow for casual experimentation. Java, > on the other hand, requires explicit compilation, so it's just not much > fun to play with. But Jython fixes that shortcoming. I think you've hit the nail on the head though: it's having an interactive interpreter that makes all the difference. Non-CS majors trying to be productive in their own disciplines should be given an interactive language to learn (Mathematica and Matlab also qualify, as does J). > My apologies for focusing on OCaml so much on this post; I'm still a bit > brainwashed after reading Mark Jason Dominus's page on: > > http://perl.plover.com/yak/typing/typing.html > > *grin* Again, I appreciate your detailed input. Kirby From jason.cunliffe at verizon.net Wed Oct 15 14:44:54 2003 From: jason.cunliffe at verizon.net (Jason Cunliffe) Date: Wed Oct 15 14:43:07 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] java References: Message-ID: <001201c3934c$6cf810e0$6501a8c0@vaio> > I think you've hit the nail on the head though: it's having an interactive > interpreter that makes all the difference. Non-CS majors trying to be > productive in their own disciplines should be given an interactive language > to learn (Mathematica and Matlab also qualify, as does J). Yes indeed.. Does anyone have a full list of interactive languages? - Jason From jason.cunliffe at verizon.net Wed Oct 15 15:13:13 2003 From: jason.cunliffe at verizon.net (Jason Cunliffe) Date: Wed Oct 15 15:12:16 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] interactive languages References: <001201c3934c$6cf810e0$6501a8c0@vaio> Message-ID: <002801c39350$61b933e0$6501a8c0@vaio> > Does anyone have a full list of interactive languages? hmm... I am underwhelmed by a quick Google for "interactive languages" -- slim pickings http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=interactive+languages&btnG=Google+Search At least I expected to find more obvious evidence of rich discussion on this. Yes, I barely skimmed the surface and *very* quickly, but such Google sessions that can meaningful indicators often. I find these weak search response quite interesting. If you look instead for "interpreted language" it's more like what you might expect http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=interpreted+language Interactive == Interpreted But that's not really the [default] point or is it? The other way around I accept.. Interpreted == Interactive - Jason From villate at gnu.org Wed Oct 15 18:42:13 2003 From: villate at gnu.org (Jaime E. Villate) Date: Wed Oct 15 18:43:03 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] java In-Reply-To: <20031015162629.GA4604@nl.linux.org> References: <20031015152458.GA4360@nl.linux.org> <3F8D7315.40903@sandiego.edu> <20031015162629.GA4604@nl.linux.org> Message-ID: <20031015224213.GC564@fe.up.pt> On Wed, Oct 15, 2003 at 06:26:29PM +0200, Gerrit Holl wrote: > I am a physics student, and next year, I will be teached Java. > The same is true for (at least) Chemists and Elektrotechnicians. > I am at the University of Twente, and I know that the Vrije > Universititeit also teaches programming with Java. I'm not sure > whether the Universiteit van Amsterdam also uses Java to teach > physisians programming. In The Netherlands, there is not a big > difference between more and less important universities. I do not know Java very well, and even if I would not use it to teach my students here in Portugal, I do not think there is anything wrong with adopting it in a science course. The only problem I see with Java is that some Java features are not standard and will only work with SUN's proprietary versions; it is better to avoid using those non-standard features and write programs that can run with the free versions of Java. As a physicist, I've had to use several different programming languages during the last 25 years. Some years ago, Fortran used to be the preferred language in Physics, mainly because there was a large number of libraries already well tested; a lot of those libraries have now been ported to C++ or C. In some applications I had to use assembly language and in some other cases I've even become an expert in Postscript as a programming language :) I think that it is good to get exposed to different languages. That's why nowadays my choice for teaching would be Python, because it would allow me to cover procedural programming as well as object oriented programming and GUI applications without the overhead of a complicated syntax. Cheers, Jaime From hancock at anansispaceworks.com Wed Oct 15 20:01:47 2003 From: hancock at anansispaceworks.com (Terry Hancock) Date: Wed Oct 15 19:58:57 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] java In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wednesday 15 October 2003 01:29 pm, Kirby Urner wrote: > > Yes, Python and OCaml are excellent alternatives to Java. Both present an > > environment where the cost of playing around with the language is very low > > --- their interactive interpreters allow for casual experimentation. > But Jython fixes that shortcoming. Of course, Jython is Python, not Java from the programmer's POV, no matter that it is written and interpreted in Java. > I think you've hit the nail on the head though: it's having an interactive > interpreter that makes all the difference. Non-CS majors trying to be > productive in their own disciplines should be given an interactive language > to learn (Mathematica and Matlab also qualify, as does J). Absolutely -- I think this is the single strongest advantage of Python as far as ease of use goes: it's faster to experimentally verify behavior in the interpreter than it is to look it up in the manual. It's the only language I've used for which that is true (with the possible exception of the BASIC interpreters I started on some 20+ years ago). Add to that that Python is a full-fledged language with support for structured programming, object-oriented programming, and functional-programming models, and it's just a real breeze to get going in. I've also just used Python as a shell, tinkering with word games and so on -- such as "collecting the 400 most commonly used words of more than 3 characters appearing in selected project Gutenberg texts," which I did without formally creating a program, but just tinkering with objects in the interpreter. It's also pretty cool that Python is forgiving enough to let you do something like: words = open("jane_austens_collected_works.txt", 'r').read().split() uniq_words = {} for word in words: uniq_words[word] += 1 without choking your computer. ;-) (Yes this is an imperfect result -- I actually did a bit more than this when I did it -- I was compiling an "ignore" list for a mnemonic id generator, in which I wanted to throw out common words and preferentially keep the more unique words in a title). This tolerance of blunderingly inefficient (but conceptually obvious) approaches is also what made IDL nice in astronomical work. I haven't tried some of the other languages you mention, so I can't say that Python is better than them, but it's certainly a good place to start, and it does a lot of stuff well. I also have a very warm fuzzy feeling knowing that Python is both free and Free, and therefore I don't have to worry about losing it or being left behind so much. Cheers, Terry -- Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com ) Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com From shannon at centre.edu Thu Oct 16 08:08:14 2003 From: shannon at centre.edu (Christine A. Shannon) Date: Thu Oct 16 08:08:20 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] java Message-ID: <0D6F3677FF3C0045BBEE54DB65C4EE4D6ACBDF@exchange.centre.edu> At Centre College we have been teaching CS I using Python for over three years. I reported on the course at the last ACM SIGCSE meeting: Shannon, Christine, "Another Breadth-first Approach to CS I using Python," Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, Reno, Nevada, February 19-22, 2003, pp. 248-251. In the second course - which is primarily a data structures course -- we use Java. Students find it much harder but of course we also solve much harder problems. There is a learning curve -- but students know the basics of programming and now have to learn a new syntax with lots of extra rules like declaring variables, interfaces, Comparable Objects etc. I know I would not want to be teaching this to students who are only marginally interested in CS. Most students in our introductory course are taking it because their major requires it or because they want to learn something about computers. The breadth first course we teach is much more appropriate for them and still serves the needs of our majors. Many students resort to Python in later courses where they are free to choose a programming language. Christine Shannon Margaret V. Haggin Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science Centre College 600 W. Walnut Danville, KY 40422 859 238 5406 -----Original Message----- From: edu-sig-request@python.org [mailto:edu-sig-request@python.org] Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 7:59 PM To: edu-sig@python.org Subject: Edu-sig Digest, Vol 3, Issue 13 Send Edu-sig mailing list submissions to edu-sig@python.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to edu-sig-request@python.org You can reach the person managing the list at edu-sig-owner@python.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Edu-sig digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: java (luby liao) 2. Re: java (Gerrit Holl) 3. Re: java (Jason Cunliffe) 4. RE: java (Kirby Urner) 5. Re: java - 2 examples (Jason Cunliffe) 6. RE: java (Danny Yoo) 7. RE: java (Kirby Urner) 8. Re: java (Jason Cunliffe) 9. interactive languages (Jason Cunliffe) 10. Re: java (Jaime E. Villate) 11. Re: java (Terry Hancock) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 09:17:25 -0700 From: luby liao Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] java To: Gerrit Holl Cc: edu-sig@python.org Message-ID: <3F8D7315.40903@sandiego.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Gerrit, do you know what unviersities? Are they important universities? What are their wisdom? cheers, Luby -- Luby Liao, Department of Math/CS, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA 92110 (619)260-4021(O), (858)452-7644(H), (619)260-4293(fax) 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogroves And the mome raths outgrabe -- L.C. >Hello, > >at least three universities in The Netherlands >use Java to teach programming to non-CS-student. > >Is this bad? > >yours, >Gerrit Holl. > > > ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 18:26:29 +0200 From: Gerrit Holl Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] java To: edu-sig@python.org Message-ID: <20031015162629.GA4604@nl.linux.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii luby liao wrote: > Gerrit, do you know what unviersities? Are they important > universities? What are their wisdom? cheers, Luby I am a physics student, and next year, I will be teached Java. The same is true for (at least) Chemists and Elektrotechnicians. I am at the University of Twente, and I know that the Vrije Universititeit also teaches programming with Java. I'm not sure whether the Universiteit van Amsterdam also uses Java to teach physisians programming. In The Netherlands, there is not a big difference between more and less important universities. My father (Ruby'ist) doesn't understand why universities do so. I think he is over-aggerating when he compares Java with Cobol, both being used in companies a lot, but I do understand that Java is lower-level so less useful in physics? yours, Gerrit. -- 190. If a man does not maintain a child that he has adopted as a son and reared with his other children, then his adopted son may return to his father's house. -- 1780 BC, Hammurabi, Code of Law -- Asperger Syndroom - een persoonlijke benadering: http://people.nl.linux.org/~gerrit/ Kom in verzet tegen dit kabinet: http://www.sp.nl/ ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 13:02:38 -0400 From: "Jason Cunliffe" Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] java To: "Gerrit Holl" Cc: edu-sig@python.org Message-ID: <007301c3933e$23979d20$6501a8c0@vaio> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > at least three universities in The Netherlands > use Java to teach programming to non-CS-student. > > Is this bad? No - Not "bad".. [but it depends what you mean by bad] Learning any widely used computer language is a good thing, especially if it is well taught ;-) Learning several languages over time is even better ! An common argument is about which language makes a good beginning. Is this your first programming language ? What skills/experience/interest do you have now? When considering languages I think it is very important to consider the size and quality or community and resources around them. This social collaborative environment is as essential as the specific technical features. Python for example has a great community who contribute quality learning and code openly and generously. Java has some of that also, though perhaps more mixed up with commercial context. Java is very widely used, and increasingly so for sophisticated apps and frameworks for many communications and scientific software. Java-based tools can also be used with others very effectively. One example is Jython which offers a bridge between and benefits of both Java and Python. Java can be initially very verbose compared to some other languages. That is why many people prefer languages like Python or Ruby. Because they are considered more concise, more readable, more elegant, more fun, [insert-your-own-preference-here], etc. But beauty is in the eye of the maker, and the beholder. So many levels and ways of approaching progamming, that it is best to keep a very open mind to these issues. Experience will make it easier to decide what you like and why. Java syntax and features are very similar to a number of modern langauges. So even if you don't continue long with it, you will gain many valuable core skills you can apply elsewhere. An excellent book discussed here not long ago is "Head First Java". http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/hfjava/ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596004656/002-6665319-353 3633?v=glance good luck - Jason ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 10:20:39 -0700 From: "Kirby Urner" Subject: RE: [Edu-sig] java To: "'Gerrit Holl'" , edu-sig@python.org Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I think there's a trend in many US colleges and universities towards using dynamic languages for non-CS course, vs. the more static ones. Static languages require declaring variable types before use and are generally a lot stricter, and therefore take somewhat longer to learn. If I had to choose one over the other, I'd take Python over Java. Students would be more productive more quickly and it's easier to teach. Static languages include: Java, C, C++, C#, Pascal, ocaml Dynamic languages include: Python, Perl, Ruby, FoxPro That being said, Java is a capable, contemporary language and the skills one learns are transferable to other languages. For more readings see: http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=4639 http://altis.pycs.net/2003/05/02.html Kirby > -----Original Message----- > From: edu-sig-bounces+urnerk=qwest.net@python.org [mailto:edu-sig- > bounces+urnerk=qwest.net@python.org] On Behalf Of Gerrit Holl > Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 8:25 AM > To: edu-sig@python.org > Subject: [Edu-sig] java > > Hello, > > at least three universities in The Netherlands > use Java to teach programming to non-CS-student. > > Is this bad? > > yours, > Gerrit Holl. ------------------------------ Message: 5 Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 13:26:38 -0400 From: "Jason Cunliffe" Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] java - 2 examples To: "Gerrit Holl" Cc: edu-sig@python.org Message-ID: <008c01c39341$7e3892e0$6501a8c0@vaio> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Two examples of very cool software written in Java for science student: JSyn http://www.softsynth.com/jsyn/ Vis-Ad http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/visad.html enjoy -Jason ------------------------------ Message: 6 Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 11:12:18 -0700 (PDT) From: Danny Yoo Subject: RE: [Edu-sig] java To: Kirby Urner Cc: edu-sig@python.org, 'Gerrit Holl' Message-ID: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > Static languages require declaring variable types before use and are > generally a lot stricter, and therefore take somewhat longer to learn. [some text cut] > Static languages include: Java, C, C++, C#, Pascal, ocaml Hi Kirby, I do have to disagree about clumping OCaml in with those other languages. OCaml (and the ML languages) are strictly typed, but their type systems are much more intelligent than traditional "typed" languages. Unlike Java, C, C++, C#, and Pascal, OCaml will perform proper type inference; in almost all cases, types won't have to be explicitely written out. For example: (******) # let rec length list = if list = [] then 0 else 1 + length (List.tl list);; val length : 'a list -> int = (******) This length() function takes a list of any type, and knows that it'll return an integer. Nothing here requires the programmer to explicitly declare variable types -- it'll work on lists of strings just as well as on lists of integers. (******) # length ["hello"; "world"];; - : int = 2 # length [1;2;3;4;5];; - : int = 5 (******) And, like Python, OCaml's types will follow values, not names: (******) # let age = "forty-two";; val age : string = "forty-two" # let age = 42;; val age : int = 42 (******) OCaml has a lot of the good features of a "dynamic" language, including a interactive interpreter. And although its syntax is a little wacky, that shouldn't be an excuse to aggregate it with the likes of Java. *grin* > If I had to choose one over the other, I'd take Python over Java. > Students would be more productive more quickly and it's easier to teach. Yes, Python and OCaml are excellent alternatives to Java. Both present an environment where the cost of playing around with the language is very low --- their interactive interpreters allow for casual experimentation. Java, on the other hand, requires explicit compilation, so it's just not much fun to play with. My apologies for focusing on OCaml so much on this post; I'm still a bit brainwashed after reading Mark Jason Dominus's page on: http://perl.plover.com/yak/typing/typing.html *grin* Good luck to you! ------------------------------ Message: 7 Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 11:29:43 -0700 From: "Kirby Urner" Subject: RE: [Edu-sig] java To: "'Danny Yoo'" Cc: edu-sig@python.org, 'Gerrit Holl' Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > I do have to disagree about clumping OCaml in with those other languages. OK, thanks for the experience-based details. I just grabbed it from someone else's list of static languages. I've not used OCaml myself (just read some docs at one point). > This length() function takes a list of any type, and knows that it'll > return an integer. Nothing here requires the programmer to explicitly > declare variable types -- it'll work on lists of strings just as well as > on lists of integers. > > (******) > # length ["hello"; "world"];; > - : int = 2 > # length [1;2;3;4;5];; > - : int = 5 > (******) Well, this would be a feature of C# as well, in that the System.Array type has its built-in Length field, like Python's __len__ method, where the Array may be of various types, or of mixed type if you say its an array of object references. Yes, you have to declare the array type, but it's the same myarray.Length invocation every time. Isn't Java like this too? > > And, like Python, OCaml's types will follow values, not names: > > (******) > # let age = "forty-two";; > val age : string = "forty-two" > # let age = 42;; > val age : int = 42 > (******) > > OCaml has a lot of the good features of a "dynamic" language, including a > interactive interpreter. And although its syntax is a little wacky, that > shouldn't be an excuse to aggregate it with the likes of Java. *grin* > > > > If I had to choose one over the other, I'd take Python over Java. > > Students would be more productive more quickly and it's easier to teach. > > Yes, Python and OCaml are excellent alternatives to Java. Both present an > environment where the cost of playing around with the language is very low > --- their interactive interpreters allow for casual experimentation. Java, > on the other hand, requires explicit compilation, so it's just not much > fun to play with. But Jython fixes that shortcoming. I think you've hit the nail on the head though: it's having an interactive interpreter that makes all the difference. Non-CS majors trying to be productive in their own disciplines should be given an interactive language to learn (Mathematica and Matlab also qualify, as does J). > My apologies for focusing on OCaml so much on this post; I'm still a bit > brainwashed after reading Mark Jason Dominus's page on: > > http://perl.plover.com/yak/typing/typing.html > > *grin* Again, I appreciate your detailed input. Kirby ------------------------------ Message: 8 Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 14:44:54 -0400 From: "Jason Cunliffe" Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] java To: "Kirby Urner" Cc: edu-sig@python.org Message-ID: <001201c3934c$6cf810e0$6501a8c0@vaio> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > I think you've hit the nail on the head though: it's having an interactive > interpreter that makes all the difference. Non-CS majors trying to be > productive in their own disciplines should be given an interactive language > to learn (Mathematica and Matlab also qualify, as does J). Yes indeed.. Does anyone have a full list of interactive languages? - Jason ------------------------------ Message: 9 Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 15:13:13 -0400 From: "Jason Cunliffe" Subject: [Edu-sig] interactive languages To: Message-ID: <002801c39350$61b933e0$6501a8c0@vaio> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > Does anyone have a full list of interactive languages? hmm... I am underwhelmed by a quick Google for "interactive languages" -- slim pickings http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=interactive+langu ages&btnG=Google+Search At least I expected to find more obvious evidence of rich discussion on this. Yes, I barely skimmed the surface and *very* quickly, but such Google sessions that can meaningful indicators often. I find these weak search response quite interesting. If you look instead for "interpreted language" it's more like what you might expect http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=interpreted+language Interactive == Interpreted But that's not really the [default] point or is it? The other way around I accept.. Interpreted == Interactive - Jason ------------------------------ Message: 10 Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:42:13 +0100 From: "Jaime E. Villate" Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] java To: edu-sig@python.org Message-ID: <20031015224213.GC564@fe.up.pt> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On Wed, Oct 15, 2003 at 06:26:29PM +0200, Gerrit Holl wrote: > I am a physics student, and next year, I will be teached Java. > The same is true for (at least) Chemists and Elektrotechnicians. > I am at the University of Twente, and I know that the Vrije > Universititeit also teaches programming with Java. I'm not sure > whether the Universiteit van Amsterdam also uses Java to teach > physisians programming. In The Netherlands, there is not a big > difference between more and less important universities. I do not know Java very well, and even if I would not use it to teach my students here in Portugal, I do not think there is anything wrong with adopting it in a science course. The only problem I see with Java is that some Java features are not standard and will only work with SUN's proprietary versions; it is better to avoid using those non-standard features and write programs that can run with the free versions of Java. As a physicist, I've had to use several different programming languages during the last 25 years. Some years ago, Fortran used to be the preferred language in Physics, mainly because there was a large number of libraries already well tested; a lot of those libraries have now been ported to C++ or C. In some applications I had to use assembly language and in some other cases I've even become an expert in Postscript as a programming language :) I think that it is good to get exposed to different languages. That's why nowadays my choice for teaching would be Python, because it would allow me to cover procedural programming as well as object oriented programming and GUI applications without the overhead of a complicated syntax. Cheers, Jaime ------------------------------ Message: 11 Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 19:01:47 -0500 From: Terry Hancock Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] java To: edu-sig@python.org Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" On Wednesday 15 October 2003 01:29 pm, Kirby Urner wrote: > > Yes, Python and OCaml are excellent alternatives to Java. Both present an > > environment where the cost of playing around with the language is very low > > --- their interactive interpreters allow for casual experimentation. > But Jython fixes that shortcoming. Of course, Jython is Python, not Java from the programmer's POV, no matter that it is written and interpreted in Java. > I think you've hit the nail on the head though: it's having an interactive > interpreter that makes all the difference. Non-CS majors trying to be > productive in their own disciplines should be given an interactive language > to learn (Mathematica and Matlab also qualify, as does J). Absolutely -- I think this is the single strongest advantage of Python as far as ease of use goes: it's faster to experimentally verify behavior in the interpreter than it is to look it up in the manual. It's the only language I've used for which that is true (with the possible exception of the BASIC interpreters I started on some 20+ years ago). Add to that that Python is a full-fledged language with support for structured programming, object-oriented programming, and functional-programming models, and it's just a real breeze to get going in. I've also just used Python as a shell, tinkering with word games and so on -- such as "collecting the 400 most commonly used words of more than 3 characters appearing in selected project Gutenberg texts," which I did without formally creating a program, but just tinkering with objects in the interpreter. It's also pretty cool that Python is forgiving enough to let you do something like: words = open("jane_austens_collected_works.txt", 'r').read().split() uniq_words = {} for word in words: uniq_words[word] += 1 without choking your computer. ;-) (Yes this is an imperfect result -- I actually did a bit more than this when I did it -- I was compiling an "ignore" list for a mnemonic id generator, in which I wanted to throw out common words and preferentially keep the more unique words in a title). This tolerance of blunderingly inefficient (but conceptually obvious) approaches is also what made IDL nice in astronomical work. I haven't tried some of the other languages you mention, so I can't say that Python is better than them, but it's certainly a good place to start, and it does a lot of stuff well. I also have a very warm fuzzy feeling knowing that Python is both free and Free, and therefore I don't have to worry about losing it or being left behind so much. Cheers, Terry -- Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com ) Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig End of Edu-sig Digest, Vol 3, Issue 13 ************************************** From urnerk at qwest.net Sun Oct 19 20:02:51 2003 From: urnerk at qwest.net (Kirby Urner) Date: Sun Oct 19 20:02:46 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Design Pattern question In-Reply-To: <002801c39350$61b933e0$6501a8c0@vaio> Message-ID: I wondered if anyone had ideas about a design pattern I've been playing with. Is it perverse? I don't want to create global variables at the module level, but have a lot of information that many objects need to share and keep current about, possibly update. I don't always know these variables at the time my objects get initialized. Some become available later. So the idea is to have my classes inherit from a base class the main purpose of which is to get runtime "globals". These may be defined well after the subclass objects have been initialized. Also, I don't explicitly initialize this shared parent class either (it doesn't have an __init__ method) -- I just stuff it with variables at the class level when I want to communicate them to the children. Example: >>> class Holder: # a holding tank for shared values/references pass >>> class Foo(Holder): # use the holding tank as a base class def __init__(self): self.a = 1 >>> o = Foo() >>> o.a 1 >>> Holder.b = 3 # create a value inside the base >>> o.b # now the subclass has access to it 3 >>> class Goo(Holder): def __init__(self): self.q = 2 >>> k = Goo() >>> k.q 2 >>> k.b # a new subclass is automatically up to date 3 >>> class Super: def __init__(self): self.m = 5 Holder.topclass = self # note the instance stuffs in Holder >>> t = Super() # here we create a new object >>> k.topclass # and find it automatically accessible <__main__.Super instance at 0x00ADD0F8> >>> k.topclass.m # k and o are different user types 5 >>> o.topclass.m 5 >>> o.topclass.m = 9 # but are both free manipulate topclass >>> k.topclass.m 9 Kirby From simon at arrowtheory.com Sun Oct 19 20:50:44 2003 From: simon at arrowtheory.com (Simon Burton) Date: Sun Oct 19 21:02:06 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Design Pattern question Message-ID: <3f933164.6032.0@webone.com.au> > >I wondered if anyone had ideas about a design pattern I've been playing >with. Is it perverse? > No, it seems reasonable enough. I sometimes use an Id class with a "next_id": class Id: next_id = 0 def __init__(self): self.id = Id.next_id Id.next_id += 1 and then inherit from Id wherever i need unique (small) id's. Your idea is rather more funky, but what else are class variables for? Simon Burton. From urnerk at qwest.net Sun Oct 19 22:43:12 2003 From: urnerk at qwest.net (Kirby Urner) Date: Sun Oct 19 22:43:08 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Design Pattern question In-Reply-To: <3f933164.6032.0@webone.com.au> Message-ID: > Your idea is rather more funky, but what else are class > variables for? > > Simon Burton. > What's also funky is how a shared superclass with no constructor can hold shared instance methods, as well as shared class variables. >>> class Foo: # no constructor def method1(self, a): self.a = a >>> class Spam(Foo): def __init__(self): self.b = 10 >>> o = Spam() >>> o.b 10 >>> o.method1(19) >>> o.a 19 You can even define an instance method outside any class... >>> def method2(self, c): self.c = c ... then inject it into the superclass... >>> Foo.method2 = method2 and all the children now have it. >>> o.method2(11) >>> o.c 11 I guess I'm just re-appreciating how flexible Python is. Design patterns that just wouldn't be possible in other languages might have some currency in Python world. Kirby From missive at hotmail.com Mon Oct 20 19:38:48 2003 From: missive at hotmail.com (Lee Harr) Date: Mon Oct 20 19:38:59 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Re: Design Pattern question Message-ID: >I wondered if anyone had ideas about a design pattern I've been playing >with. Is it perverse? > >I don't want to create global variables at the module level, but have a lot >of information that many objects need to share and keep current about, >possibly update. I don't always know these variables at the time my >objects >get initialized. Some become available later. > >So the idea is to have my classes inherit from a base class the main >purpose >of which is to get runtime "globals". These may be defined well after the >subclass objects have been initialized. > >Also, I don't explicitly initialize this shared parent class either (it >doesn't have an __init__ method) -- I just stuff it with variables at the >class level when I want to communicate them to the children. > I think I might find it confusing because of the way names get bound to certain things at class level, but overridden at the instance level. Like this: >>>class Holder: ... pass ... >>>class Foo(Holder): ... def __init__(self): ... self.a = 1 ... >>>o=Foo() >>>o.a 1 >>>Holder.b = 3 >>>o.b 3 >>>class Goo(Holder): ... def __init__(self): ... self.q = 2 ... >>>k=Goo() >>>k.q 2 >>>k.b 3 >>>o.b=5 >>>k.b 3 >>>Holder.b=5 >>>k.b 5 >>>k.b=7 >>>Holder.b 5 So, one instance changing the value does not change it in other instances, unless they all always explicitly access it as Holder.x What I have done (and I am certainly not saying it is the best way, or even any better than what you have) is to create a separate module that just holds a bunch of names that many other modules need to access. Everyone always refers to it by it's full name and so everyone always has the same information. It's kind of a global namespace that is not global, if that makes any sense. In pygsear, it is the conf module. Some things that I keep in there are the size of the window, sound system status, time count (ticks), and I am probably going to put a handle for the currently running Game instance there too. _________________________________________________________________ Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail From urnerk at qwest.net Mon Oct 20 23:25:47 2003 From: urnerk at qwest.net (Kirby Urner) Date: Mon Oct 20 23:25:41 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Re: Design Pattern question In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > > I think I might find it confusing because of the way names get bound > to certain things at class level, but overridden at the instance level. I think you're right. It's not that great a design pattern, for the reason you mention: children can't easily update each other. This pattern is mainly for when the children don't have their own versions of the same variables -- basically read-only access to the parent is what's going on here. If I want children to all update the same variables, one option is to stuff a globals class into the parent and then update it explicitly, as you say. >>> class Globals: # some shared variables a = 1 b = 2 >>> class Foo: globals = Globals() def __init__(self): x = 1 >>> o1 = Foo() >>> o2 = Foo() >>> o1.globals.a 1 >>> o1.globals.a = 1999 >>> o2.globals.a 1999 I can also stick new attributes into Foo.globals at runtime, and they'll join the pack of shared updatables. > What I have done (and I am certainly not saying it is the best way, > or even any better than what you have) is to create a separate > module that just holds a bunch of names that many other modules > need to access. Everyone always refers to it by it's full name and > so everyone always has the same information. Interesting approach. The general idea is we're looking to create a shared namespace that's not truly global, but still lets as many objects as we like in on the same secrets. > It's kind of a global namespace that is not global, if that makes > any sense. Sure. > In pygsear, it is the conf module. Some things that I keep in there > are the size of the window, sound system status, time count (ticks), > and I am probably going to put a handle for the currently running > Game instance there too. That's very similar to my challenge: I'm working on one of those multi-banded reports, with title, summary, group and detail bars (headers, footers). All these objects need to share information about the page, especially how much room is left before a page break is required. Kirby From dethe.elza at blastradius.com Tue Oct 21 13:16:02 2003 From: dethe.elza at blastradius.com (Dethe Elza) Date: Tue Oct 21 13:16:12 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Re: Design Pattern question In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3F7300AE-03EA-11D8-813D-0003939B59E8@blastradius.com> Keeping state shared across many instances is what the Singleton pattern is commonly used for. Alex Martelli has a great recipe on the Python Cookbook site about how to create instance variables which share state, called the Borg pattern[1]. This may be overkill for what you're doing, but it offers an interesting perspective. In the situation you describe I've taken several tactics. One is to have a *single* global object to store preferences or other shared state. Another is to pass the shared state around in one object that various parts of the system all have access to. And the Extreme Programming folks would preach YAGNI (You Ain't Gonna Need It). There is a perception that globals are evil and should never be used, but a) python's namespaces already help protect from the worst aspects of globals (most 'globals' are really module-local), and b) if a program is small or one-off it doesn't make sense to overdesign it just to remove globals that won't effect anything. My first drafts of programs are often littered with globals. When I have a working version and want to add more utility, or reuse bits in another program, or find it growing to the point that the globals are getting in the way, I refactor them into a single object and use it as above. But only after I find myself returning to the program again and again, so that I know the effort will be worth it. --Dethe "the city carries such a cargo of pathos and longing that daily life there vaccinates us against revelation" -- Pain Not Bread, The Rise and Fall of Human Breath From arkamir at softhome.net Tue Oct 21 19:13:32 2003 From: arkamir at softhome.net (Conrad Koziol) Date: Wed Oct 22 00:03:58 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] linux Message-ID: <1066778012.5035.6.camel@quercus> hey can someone point me too sites which advocate linux over microsoft. I have to do a persuasive essay in english, and was hoping to make a case for everyones favorite operating system. I need sources and info which i cant think of. Thanks a lot From cs1spw at bath.ac.uk Wed Oct 22 00:29:52 2003 From: cs1spw at bath.ac.uk (Simon Willison) Date: Wed Oct 22 00:30:35 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] linux In-Reply-To: <1066778012.5035.6.camel@quercus> References: <1066778012.5035.6.camel@quercus> Message-ID: <3F9607C0.6050003@bath.ac.uk> Conrad Koziol wrote: > hey can someone point me too sites which advocate linux over > microsoft. I have to do a persuasive essay in english, and was hoping > to make a case for everyones favorite operating system. I need > sources and info which i cant think of. Why not make a case for everyone's favourite programming language? ;) Seriously though, I had to put together a presentation for a University course last semester and did one on why Python is a useful tool and a worthy competitor to statically typed languages such as Java and C and it ended up being a very nice topic. For Linux though (or rather open source in general) you may do well to check out the famous open letter to Microsoft from a Peruvian congressman to the head of Microsoft Peru: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/25157.html Best regards, Simon Willison http://simon.incutio.com/ From urnerk at qwest.net Wed Oct 22 01:57:38 2003 From: urnerk at qwest.net (Kirby Urner) Date: Wed Oct 22 01:57:33 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Re: Design Pattern question In-Reply-To: <3F7300AE-03EA-11D8-813D-0003939B59E8@blastradius.com> Message-ID: > In the situation you describe I've taken several tactics. One is to > have a *single* global object to store preferences or other shared > state. Another is to pass the shared state around in one object that > various parts of the system all have access to. > I've sort of gone with the single global object, but it's not really global, it's an object in the base class which only the object's children (subclasses) share and communicate through. > And the Extreme Programming folks would preach YAGNI (You Ain't Gonna > Need It). There is a perception that globals are evil and should never > be used, but a) python's namespaces already help protect from the worst > aspects of globals (most 'globals' are really module-local), and b) if > a program is small or one-off it doesn't make sense to overdesign it > just to remove globals that won't effect anything. Yes, globals and side effects are supposedly evil. But then class methods and variables are supposedly *not* evil. So by making my "globals" live in the mind of the parent class, I'm really just exploiting the power of inheritance. > My first drafts of programs are often littered with globals. When I > have a working version and want to add more utility, or reuse bits in > another program, or find it growing to the point that the globals are > getting in the way, I refactor them into a single object and use it as > above. But only after I find myself returning to the program again and > again, so that I know the effort will be worth it. > > --Dethe A good strategy. Don't waste a lot of time polishing one-off code (or even infrequently needed code) to make it text book perfect. Life is short. Kirby From villate at gnu.org Wed Oct 22 04:18:10 2003 From: villate at gnu.org (Jaime E. Villate) Date: Wed Oct 22 04:19:05 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] linux In-Reply-To: <3F9607C0.6050003@bath.ac.uk> References: <1066778012.5035.6.camel@quercus> <3F9607C0.6050003@bath.ac.uk> Message-ID: <20031022081810.GD510@fe.up.pt> On Tue, Oct 21, 2003 at 11:29:52PM -0500, Simon Willison wrote: > Conrad Koziol wrote: > > >hey can someone point me too sites which advocate linux over > >microsoft. I have to do a persuasive essay in english, and was hoping > >to make a case for everyones favorite operating system. I need > >sources and info which i cant think of. ... > For Linux though (or rather open source in general) you may do well to > check out the famous open letter to Microsoft from a Peruvian > congressman to the head of Microsoft Peru: > http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/25157.html That's an excellent reference. But please notice that in his letter, Congressman Villanueva starts by correcting a common mistake made by MS, and many others, of replacing the term Free Software by Open Source (3rd paragraph). Two other references that you might find useful: UNESCO's Free Software Portal: http://www.unesco.org/webworld/portal_freesoft/index.shtml Free software and research, by Francesco Potort?: http://softwarelibero.it/ricerca/fs-and-research.html You can also find a lot of information in GNU's site: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ Regards, Jaime From nico at tekNico.net Wed Oct 22 09:16:54 2003 From: nico at tekNico.net (Nicola Larosa) Date: Wed Oct 22 09:21:00 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] linux In-Reply-To: <1066778012.5035.6.camel@quercus> References: <1066778012.5035.6.camel@quercus> Message-ID: <3F968346.6090602@tekNico.net> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 > hey can someone point me too sites which advocate linux over microsoft. I > have to do a persuasive essay in english, and was hoping to make a case > for everyones favorite operating system. I need sources and info which i > cant think of. Here you are, but try not to copy too much, or Google will betray you: ;^) Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers! http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html - -- "Computers are in many ways becoming a bad word in our society as a whole. They are nothing but spam, porn, and bad ergonomics." -- Shelley Walsh Nicola Larosa - nico@tekNico.net -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/loNFXv0hgDImBm4RAlpWAKCaNMd+MZHODUJyyl5qeJ3GOAM2twCeP+li GAfgyhX8Tmh+TPVDUhPRpic= =ea0z -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From mrmrmr50 at yahoo.com Wed Oct 22 16:42:42 2003 From: mrmrmr50 at yahoo.com (mike re-v) Date: Wed Oct 22 16:42:46 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] kidspiration- linux Message-ID: <20031022204242.60593.qmail@web21206.mail.yahoo.com> Hello, Can anyone point me to an open-source graphic organizer like the commercial Inspiration/Kidspiration? Thanks re-v __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com From ajs at optonline.net Fri Oct 24 12:59:51 2003 From: ajs at optonline.net (Arthur) Date: Fri Oct 24 12:59:57 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] The trackball reality Message-ID: <000501c39a50$3d719160$1a02a8c0@BasementDell> (I wrote this, so may as well send it out somewhere - edu-sig being the victim) Am I lost in a conspiracy theory? Dammit if I don't hate consporiacy theories. But the fact is that I have a business, rather than technical background. And in most contexts, I put no value judgments on the workings of the marketplace. I feel differently about education. At a wedding of an old friend I was introduced to a gentlemen who was a professor of HCI at a New York university. Who freely talked of the funding of grants to departments like his from corporations like Micorosoft and IBM for HCI studies related to the educational use of software. One could choose to conclude that these Corporations were "giving something back" to the community by providing these grants for these kinds of studies. If one had a good sense of humor. And the nature of the studies he described were no surprise to me. And it seemed to be consistent. "Useabiliy studies" related to highly graphical, game-like interfaces for educational software. I am perfectly convinced that if I were given 25 grant proposals to assess - based on choice of rhetoric, prosposed techniques to be employed, citations it selects to highlight, etc. - it would be child's play to identify those studies inclined to come to conclusions supportive of ideas I might find "interesting". And its my money and I will fund the projects I find "interesting". Who could dispute that? Much of the value I see in Python in education is in providing an important tool for an alternative approach. And alterntive reality, where maintaining a decent emphasis on word-based, text-based, keyboard based apsects of HCI. Not becuase it is more "useable" - but only because, in particular, what we are looking to achieve is "learning". "Learning" needing to be in quotes, because that is the crux of the matter. Because if one defines "learning" as what one might gain from interfacing a computer with a trackball, then one will conclude that the trackball is a great interface for learning. Of course - its a simple tautology. And if I prefer to define "learning" as what one gains by interfacing with the keyboard - I simply can't loose to trackball. Who is prepared to define learning? I insist that whatever it is, its definition has not been changed fundamentally by the advent of data processing machinary. Though great learning went into its advent - to be sure. Having no funding or the resources to fund studies *I* would find "interesting" - all I can claim to have is a Zen position, which has an atttendent bit of ideology attached. But that is what is in controversy, really - as far as I can see. If anything I am a backward looking (I perfer that to "reactionary") - for the *important* stuff, I think it important to look backward and try to understand if we have lost, and - if so - what we have lost, and why, and how might we regain as much of it as we can. And it is fully plausible to me that we have lost much in the realm of education. But there is nothing inconsistent to me in a position that it is fully plausible that computers could and probably should play an important role in retrieving some of this. But this is - in my view - the antithesis of redefining what is "learning". The support for these kinds of redefinitons - which would be considered radical, were there not so many mainstream forces addressing it as if it were not - is something to the effect that we are preparing citizens for a new reality. The trackball reality, Who's reality is that? Art >Games tend to push the envelope of computing, especially for user interfaces, and nearly every aspect of computer >science must be addressed in the context of a game, so they are great learning tools. And there is nothing like games to hold >attention or motivate kids. From jhrsn at pitt.edu Fri Oct 24 15:49:21 2003 From: jhrsn at pitt.edu (Jim Harrison) Date: Fri Oct 24 15:49:30 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] The trackball reality In-Reply-To: <000501c39a50$3d719160$1a02a8c0@BasementDell> Message-ID: on 10/24/03 12:59 PM, Arthur at ajs@optonline.net wrote: > "Learning" needing to be in quotes, because that is the crux of the matter. > Because if one defines "learning" as what one might gain from interfacing a > computer with a trackball, then one will conclude that the trackball is a > great interface for learning. Of course - its a simple tautology. And if I > prefer to define "learning" as what one gains by interfacing with the > keyboard - I simply can't loose to trackball. I'm not entirely sure of the point here, but it seems a truism that if one is trying to teach use of the command line, a mouse/trackball interface is not the way to do it. Vice versa also applies. And if one is trying to teach material that has nothing to do with computing, the interface should either get out of the way so that students can deal most directly with the material or if appropriate the interface should reinforce some aspect of the learning. As an alternative view, the programming language that I found most productive in the past and that made me understand OOP was Prograph. Prograph is a completely graphical, iconic language/IDE that is compiled directly from diagrams with no text intermediate. Nodes in the diagrams represented program actions at approximately the same granularity as Python statements. There were no variables in the usual sense and program execution occurred as data flowed from node to node across connecting lines (this was represented graphically during execution). I don't think high level textual languages represent what's happening in the computer any better than Prograph did, and moving from Prograph to textual OO languages didn't present a conceptual problem. A mouse/trackball was the right tool to use with Prograph whereas a keyboard is the right tool for textual languages. Jim Harrison Univ. of Pittsburgh From ajs at optonline.net Fri Oct 24 18:10:08 2003 From: ajs at optonline.net (Arthur) Date: Fri Oct 24 18:11:24 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] re: The trackball reality Message-ID: <000501c39a7b$964b0660$1c02a8c0@BasementDell> Jim writes - >As an alternative view, the programming language that I found most >productive in the past and that made me understand OOP was Prograph. You thankfully disarm me in talking about your personal experience, not that of subjects. And it would be stupid of me to argue that your experience is not your experience. I also discussed with my HCI professor my frustration in trying to communicate with acamadicians about these matters. My starting point - not long ago - being unaware of there even being a field called HCI. But knowing my own experience. And unwilling to accept that a naive view - on these matters - is not a substantive view, nonetheless. And allowing myself some cynicism in respect to what is being passed off as "informed". Which is derivative of other cynicisms, no doubt. Having my own sense of what informed might mean, when assessing the academic approach to some of these matters. That being said, I was told that my postion had some resonance with some of what he has read from Jakob Nielson, and he recommended I take a look. Nielsen apparently a highly influential man in the world of HCI. The most on point thing I come up with is "The Anti-Mac Interface" http://www.acm.org/cacm/AUG96/antimac.htm Besides talking about the "central role of language" in this alternative view, come this: """ Expert Users The GUIs of contemporary applications are generally well designed for ease of learning, but there often is a trade-off between ease of learning on one hand, and ease of use, power, and flexibility on the other hand. Although you could imagine a society where language was easy to learn because people communicated by pointing to words and icons on large menus they carried about, humans have instead chosen to invest many years in mastering a rich and complex language. Today's children will spend a large fraction of their lives communicating with computers. We should think about the trade-offs between ease of learning and power in computer-human interfaces. If there were a compensating return in increased power, it would not be unreasonable to expect a person to spend several years learning to communicate with computers, just as we now expect children to spend 20 years mastering their native language. """ I reproduce it as thought provoking, not gospel. Certainly Nielson himself is not presenting it as such. But it allows us to speculate that the ease of learning on one hand, and suitability for contributing to the process of creating human beings empowered in respect to their ability to interface with technology (maybe my redefintion of "HCI") might - in some substantial respects - be opposing, not complementary goals. Unfortunately enough. But not surprisingly, at all. Art From ajs at optonline.net Fri Oct 24 19:11:46 2003 From: ajs at optonline.net (Arthur) Date: Fri Oct 24 19:12:47 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] re: The trackball reality Message-ID: <000501c39a84$329a7610$1c02a8c0@BasementDell> >From the Nielson quote: >Although you could imagine a society where language was easy to learn because people communicated by pointing to words >and icons on large menus they carried about, humans have instead chosen to invest many years in mastering a rich and >complex language. Which could be said to relate to my contrarian view about Python. Its hard as shit to learn, really. Four years into it, and I consider myself a rank novice. I am not extraordinarily bright, but certainly not stupid. Why would Python seem to want to avoid identifying itself as rich, and *complex*. As central to its claims toward having educational value. The best that it can be is no more complex than it needs to be to allow empowerment at a level of depth that - to someone like myself - is truly interesting. Python fools me into thinking this is largely so. But I am no expert on the alternatives. I wish it would seem to me less agains the grain to feel that the proper approach is promoting the learning of Python as an difficult, arduous but worthwhile effort. I think we set up people approaching it with other expectations for likely defeat. Art From dethe.elza at blastradius.com Fri Oct 24 19:33:38 2003 From: dethe.elza at blastradius.com (Dethe Elza) Date: Fri Oct 24 19:33:43 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] re: The trackball reality In-Reply-To: <000501c39a84$329a7610$1c02a8c0@BasementDell> Message-ID: <7E649964-067A-11D8-813D-0003939B59E8@blastradius.com> Arthur wrote: > Which could be said to relate to my contrarian view about Python. > > Its hard as shit to learn, really. Four years into it, and I consider > myself > a rank novice. Programming is hard. It's the process of telling a bunch of transistors to do something, where that something may be very clear to us fuzzy humans, with all our built-in pattern matching, language processing, and existing knowledge, but really, horrifically, tediously difficult to communicate to a bunch of dumb transistors. Python *is* hard, because programming is hard. On the other hand, python is easier than (in my experience) C, C++, Objective C, Pascal, Postscript, Forth, Java, Javascript, Perl, etc. In some cases it is so much easier that it almost appears *easy* in comparison. But there is a huge difference between *easier*, even vastly easier, and *easy*. > Why would Python seem to want to avoid identifying itself as rich, and > *complex*. As central to its claims toward having educational value. I'm not aware of Python trying not to be identified as *complex*. Tim Peter's koan sums it up: "Simple is better than complex/Complex is better than complicated." Python tries to avoid being *complicated,* a goal in which it is only partially successful. Completely avoiding being complicated would involve re-writing the entire intfrastructure of computers, operating systems, libraries, frameworks, and the internet. The fact that Python succeeds in avoiding complicated as well as it does is good, but of course there is still tremendous room for improvement. > > I wish it would seem to me less agains the grain to feel that the > proper > approach is promoting the learning of Python as an difficult, arduous > but > worthwhile effort. I think we set up people approaching it with other > expectations for likely defeat. Well, I think you have a good point. We should never deny that programming is a difficult and arduous, but worthwhile effort. On the other hand, it doesn't make sense to emphasize the difficulty early and turn away novices before they've begun. Better to demonstrate the simpler bits and introduce the hard stuff as driven by need and curiousity, once the programming newcomer is hooked into the habit of creating executable abstractions. --Dethe "Computers are beyond dumb, they're mind-numbingly stupid. They're hostile, rigid, capricious, and unforgiving. They're impossibly demanding and they never learn anything." -- John R. Levine From ajs at optonline.net Fri Oct 24 22:04:31 2003 From: ajs at optonline.net (Arthur) Date: Fri Oct 24 22:04:42 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] re: The trackball reality Message-ID: <000701c39a9c$544eec60$1c02a8c0@BasementDell> Dethe writes - >On the other hand, python is easier than (in my >experience) C, C++,Objective C, Pascal, Postscript, Forth, Java, >Javascript, Perl, etc. In some cases it is so >much easier that it almost appears *easy* in comparison. But there is a huge >difference between *easier*, even vastly easier, and *easy*. My only experience of the languages on your list is Java. In some fundamental way I think it is easier. The do and don'ts are more clearly defined. In a relatively short amount of time I fellt that I had learned Java, to the extent I was interested in learning Java. I am not there yet with Python. Which I find more intriguing. more empowering, more complex and much more fun. Art From jason.cunliffe at verizon.net Sat Oct 25 00:48:26 2003 From: jason.cunliffe at verizon.net (Jason Cunliffe) Date: Sat Oct 25 00:46:12 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] SpeedTree - The Valley Real-Time Demo Message-ID: <000501c39ab3$3aa7ba00$6501a8c0@vaio> http://www.idvinc.com/html/the_valley.htm It's a holy grail of the real-time world: An outdoor environment of realistic foliage that runs efficiently but features off-line quality. The Valley delivers. Windblown trees and grass that look real from ANY distance (even within the tree itself!), along with bump mapped bark textures, specular effects, and a variety of shadow effects. The perfect complement to our Huge Forest of a million trees, The Valley is an unprecedented celebration of SpeedTree's aesthetic versatility, range and power. The full source code for The Valley will be available to all SpeedTreeRT evaluators with the release of SpeedTreeRT 1.6. From urnerk at qwest.net Sat Oct 25 02:10:52 2003 From: urnerk at qwest.net (Kirby Urner) Date: Sat Oct 25 02:10:55 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] PDFs in Python and Java (Jason: The Valley, installs for you?) In-Reply-To: <000501c39ab3$3aa7ba00$6501a8c0@vaio> Message-ID: > The full source code for The Valley will be available to all SpeedTreeRT > evaluators with the release of SpeedTreeRT 1.6. Did you actually get the demo to run. I tried and got installer errors. To make this about Python: I've been learning ReportLab, which allows direct creation of PDFs from scratch. My goal was to write a primitive banded report generator, that lets you group records, define headers/footers and like that. In Java world, an open source project called Jasper Reports seems fairly mature, and is in turn based on iText, which I'm also playing with (it's the Java world analog to Python's ReportLab). As per Arthur's post, I agree that Java is fairly easy, syntax-wise. What's complex is getting a handle on the huge forest of class hierarchies, both native and downloadable. But of course that's a challenge in any full-featured language, Python included. One just learns to use the reference materials, such as they are. Perl has CPAN and there's some buzz about how to improve Python's infrastructure for sharing code/modules, perhaps with a built-in rating system. This thread gets revisited rather often in our Portland group, thanks to Kevin Altis and others. Kirby From cs1spw at bath.ac.uk Tue Oct 28 11:37:11 2003 From: cs1spw at bath.ac.uk (Simon Willison) Date: Tue Oct 28 11:37:50 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] matplotlib: a Python plotting library Message-ID: <3F9E9B37.6060909@bath.ac.uk> I just spotted this on the Daily Python-URL: http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html """ matplotlib is a pure python plotting library designed to bring publication quality plotting to python with a syntax familiar to matlab users. A lot progress towards this goal has been made since the first release of matplotlib (see goals), the library does produce high quality 2D plots. All of the plotting commands can be accessed either via a functional interface familiar to matlab users or an object oriented interface familiar to python users, and several high resolution output formats are supported """ This looks like it could be a valuable tool for promoting Python in higher education. -- Simon Willison Web development weblog: http://simon.incutio.com/ From urnerk at qwest.net Tue Oct 28 13:43:23 2003 From: urnerk at qwest.net (Kirby Urner) Date: Tue Oct 28 13:43:25 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] matplotlib: a Python plotting library In-Reply-To: <3F9E9B37.6060909@bath.ac.uk> Message-ID: > This looks like it could be a valuable tool for promoting Python in > higher education. > > -- > Simon Willison > Web development weblog: http://simon.incutio.com/ Thanks for the link. I should add it to the edu-sig page. Also see: http://www.scipy.org/ http://www.scipy.org/site_content/tutorials/plot_tutorial IMO, one of the myths out there is that Python isn't used in higher education and therefore needs promoting therein. What's closer to the truth is dynamic (vs. static) programming languages have only recently made significant inroads in introductory and algorithms-based computer science courses. Python is riding this wave. But when it comes to just getting results, in both the academic and commercial sectors, Python is already very well established. You come across it everywhere. It controls telescopes, displays molecular structures, implements e-commerce. Of course it doesn't hurt to advocate for even greater adoption, but we should avoid being inadvertently counter-productive by buying and sharing the premise that "hardly anybody uses Python". The reality is it's a major language, used by lots of people every day. Kirby From jeff at elkner.net Fri Oct 31 08:08:24 2003 From: jeff at elkner.net (Jeffrey Elkner) Date: Fri Oct 31 08:06:09 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Edu Track check-in Message-ID: <1067605704.4756.20.camel@mdeicaza> Hi All, I've put up a Zwiki at: http://linus.yorktown.arlington.k12.va.us/PyCon2004/EduTrack/FrontPage with two links: http://linus.yorktown.arlington.k12.va.us/PyCon2004/EduTrack/IllBeThere and http://linus.yorktown.arlington.k12.va.us/PyCon2004/EduTrack/PresentationProposals I'm trying to get a sense of the level of interest in an Educational Track at the conference. So far, all but a few of the responses have been from Yorktown High students, and there are only a few presentation ideas. I don't know what the time line is for making a decision, but if the level of interest remains low, it might be best to just roll the three presentation propasals into one of the other tracks and give up on having an Edu track this year. Please let me know what you think... Thanks! -- Jeffrey Elkner Open Book Project From urnerk at qwest.net Fri Oct 31 11:53:12 2003 From: urnerk at qwest.net (Kirby Urner) Date: Fri Oct 31 11:53:13 2003 Subject: [Edu-sig] Edu Track check-in In-Reply-To: <1067605704.4756.20.camel@mdeicaza> Message-ID: > I don't know what the time line is for making a decision, but if the > level of interest remains low, it might be best to just roll the three > presentation propasals into one of the other tracks and give up on > having an Edu track this year. > > Please let me know what you think... > > Thanks! Hi Jeff -- Somewhere awhile back you said there was a deadline of December for proposals. I'm deadline driven. If there's an earlier deadline, before which specific inputs are needed or the edu track will be dropped, you should formalize it and announce it so I can add it to my calendar. Kirby