[Edu-sig] Beautiful sample programs?

[kirby urner]

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 2:56 PM, Helene Martin <lognaturel at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Thanks for the suggestion -- I'm familiar with that project and have
> really enjoyed showing it off to the students.  It's a really great
> package.
>
> What I'm looking for is more of a 'real-world' example.  I know
> students at some point get burned out looking at and creating nifty
> programs for their own sake!  Maybe moving onto the web is the right
> way to go.  I want to make sure that they find Python compelling for
> work just a little above the scale they are comfortable with.  Saying
> Google and Yahoo program in this language is just too big for them to
> really appreciate, I feel and at the same time, the programming in the
> small projects we get to are really cool but not entirely compelling.
> Does that make sense?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Hélène.
>

Some high schools will have that school server where you save
recordings of theatrical performances, sporting events and so on.

An understanding of TCP/IP via 'Warriors of the Net' (an on-line
movie) would be a good beginning, followed by an analysis of the
httpRequest / httpResponse ecology.  This stuff is dry and abstruse,
but really quite fun if accompanied by a real "musical instrument"
such as the Python shell, which makes it a breeze to play around.

http://www.warriorsofthe.net/  (loud sound, turn down speakers if using any?)

Install the GeoPy module maybe?  I posted some stuff about that recently.

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Message/edu-sig/3750815

There's also the rich data structure approach, i.e. get the kinds of
academic information they're already expected to know, e.g.
familiarity with Periodic Table is part of standard chemistry
curriculum, so have a Python dictionary about that?

Getting SunTzu chatting with Eliza (two bots available in Python 3rd
party) is something I've been wanting to try.

http://nltk.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doc/api/nltk.chat.suntsu-module.html
http://nltk.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doc/api/nltk.chat.eliza-module.html

http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2009/01/ppug-2009113.html (user group notes)

If you get some stellar performers, think of contacting Vern Ceder
(via this list even), as he's tasked with bringing new talent to the
attention of the Python Software Foundation and wider community at
Pycon 2010 in Atlanta.

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/edu-sig/2009-August/009454.html

A "science fair" type poster could be shared in the exhibitor hall,
even if the proud author of said poster was too young to attend in
person (one of the planned for contingencies).  We've already mailed
some pointers around, including in this archive as I recall.

If you want real world, maybe return to that high school server idea
and start yakking up Django?  You don't need to develop a full
installation to play with the modules, just import them in a shell and
use them for scaffolding.

For example, there's an "orderered dictionary" subclass used
throughout the product, implemented in Python (not C).  Here's a
chance for a source code hound to really learn some chops, and yes,
it's used by newspaper people with deadlines to meet (hard to get more
real -- tell them Clark Kent knows Django, Cloe too (Smallville
allusions, they'll know what you mean)).

Kirby

PS:  this seemed interesting, reminded me of Maria B's mathfuture
(Math 2.0) resources, Python included:
http://myreckonings.com/wordpress/2009/07/31/creating-nomograms-with-the-pynomo-software/