[Python-Dev] Python developers are in demand

[Alex Martelli]

On 10/12/07, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:
> > The problem may be related to the fact that Python is rarely teached at
> > school or university. I know no school or university in Germany that is
> > teaching Python.
>
> I teach Python to the first semester, at the Hasso-Plattner-Institut
> in Potsdam, for the third year now.

My wife (and fellow PSF member;-) Anna, a major in Symbolic Systems at
Stanford, has noticed the interesting coincidence that TWO of her
courses this quarter suggest Python as the preferred language to do
the course assignments (although both courses accept other languages
as well, focusing on the results and not the language used to achieve
them, the teachers think that Python is the best language to "get out
of your way" and let you focus on the courses' specific subjects
rather than on programming problems).  The two courses are
Computational Linguistics and Computer-Human Interactions.

The CHI course also offers a short optional Python seminar for
students that want help learning it (I believe the exercises
specifically use Nokia phones, so I assume the seminar will also cover
the specifics of the Nokia Python development environment); Anna
volunteered to do a similar short seminar for the CL course (I helped
out -- took us a Saturday).  All students taking CHI and/or CL have
already taken programming courses (typically more than one), mostly
using C++ and Java (and often C), but as far as I know there is no
Stanford course (at least not within Symbolic Systems) that focuses
specifically and exclusively on Python (there IS one course,
Programming Paradigms, that covers Python as well as Lisp, Prolog and
some FP language).

Of course, Symbolic Systems majors typically don't think of themselves
as "developers"; they're more likely to end up, say, as "CHI experts",
"computational linguists", and the like...


Alex