[Edu-sig] Populating the lesson plans database: Squeak -> Python

[kirby urner]

So I'm trying to figure out how much Smalltalk we want to try teaching
in the Squeak and eToys units pre Python.  My concern is the former
may be harder to learn, but some precocious youngsters are going to
want to anyway, but then will this make Python "harder" for them, simply
because it's "close but different" which could be confusing?

I might just be overgeneralizing from my own experience, of living in
Italy, picking up some Italian, while taking French in a British then
Americanish school, and later Spanish.  I found it hard to keep all
these Romance languages from fusing in my head.  Arabic came later
(probably a lost cause in my case).

My leaning is towards developing a "Python for Smalltalkers" set of
units, which assumes some familiarity with Smalltalk jargon and concepts,
such as messages to receivers, complete encapsulation of data, a 'self'
keyword, and compares these with Python's, where data is not necessarily
so private, and 'self', though used as a placeholder, is *not* a keyword per

se (I've seen some Japanese using 'ghost' (smile)).

For most middle schoolers, the previous paragraph might read as
gibberish, as they're still in Immersion Phase and just like floating around

in a fish tank or whatever Alice in Wonderland dream world, interacting with

the many exhibits, learning Physics or whatever.  They're not yet into the
cold hard world of 100% lexical coding where "left brain" is king (just
kidding about the king part).  But those few who are, like their adult
counterparts, might appreciate the bridge literature (screencasts included).

Such a literature already exists bridging Python and Scheme for example,
down to a Scheme interpreter written in Python (wasn't that Danny Yoo's
project?), plus discussions of Scheme's hyper powerful lambda, versus
Python's "little lambda" (as in "Mary had a"), not intended for much more
than an anonymous inline expression (name your anonymous function
Anon if you want it longer?).

And of course Python for C programmers was more the original context of
the language in the first place (Guido's target demographic was never
"children" per se) -- that literature is pretty much complete.

Perl coders tend to see Python as a dialect (so similar, yet alien enough
to still be considered "a different language"), while Java coders tend to
see
it as their possible salvation, from a lot of mindless overhead (Bruce Eckel

in this category**).

But I'm taking my cues from the many Logo -> Squeak -> Python cave
paintings I've been exposed to, a well documented sequence, complete
with lesson plans database, for ages 8 to 18.  So it's the Logo (which
Logo?)
-> Squeak and Squeak -> Python bridges which most interest me, in terms
of collecting citations and/or developing new content.  My impression is
there're still lots of holes in the Squeak -> Python literature, ready to be

filled with new lesson plan filings.

Kirby

**  http://www.mindview.net/Books/Python/ThinkingInPython.html).
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