[Edu-sig] some useful memes anyone might use when teaching / learning Python

[kirby urner]

Useful memes:

===

1. Bootup background as "starry firmament":

Python comes with a relatively fixed firmament, like the sphere of the
the stars:  the '__builtins__' namespace.

When your script (from your playbook) launches, it may assume this
starry firmament as a background.  print( ) will be there.

Using some retro pre-Copernican astrolabby toon (meme) is not verboten.

We trust our audience to have used Celestia and Stellarium (both open
source) and to be unconfused about solar system basics. **

2. Callables as "consumers":

Given emoticons, we know the ( ) in :-( ) stands for "sideways lips".
A callable, like an emoticon, has sideways lips:  duh( ).

Arguments are therefore "eaten" and are "fed" to said "mouth".

In the case of __init__ and/or instance creation, we use a birthing
metaphor and hence ( ) has a related other meaning.

Andragogy remember ( >= TV-14 much of the time, and somewhat demented)

Question:  we call them "consumers" but how "mindless" might they be?
Lets look at the source code.

3. Tractor Art:

I continue to develop this package, with an ecosystem of silos (useful
for anthropology talk, the A in STEAM).

The tractors plow in wavy fields of ASCII, simple 2D array objects
(list of lists) called Fields (what else?)

Different subtypes of Tractor, such as Cropcircle, know how to "do the
math" and give us Mandelbrots, or play Games of Life.

Lots of CS type maths in a dense little open source package, a focus
of my impromptu Lightning Talks these days (with laptop and slides)

The segues to Turtle Art are many and following them is encouraged
i.e. Tractor Art is an effective gateway (star gate) to deeper
treatments of so many topics.

===

More memes welcome.  Imagining a culturally savvy adult audience that
knows about Monty Python is a helpful practice, if aiming for
Python.tv


Kirby

** I sometimes get feedback warning I should stay away from too much
snake imagery, potentially offensive to Xtians (Diversity talk /
traffic ). Now that I've seen the new George Harrison biography (a 3.x
hour film), I even more appreciate the Monty Python / Beatles
connection, 'Life of Brian' in particular.  That's not a heritage to
be ashamed of, very much on the contrary.  So for myself, I'm not
worried about it.