Teaching the art of programming, in python

[Ivan Van Laningham]

Hi All--

Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> 

[snip]

> And all in 24 hours?
> This is as misleading as the dummy attribute.
> 

I don't think so.  You can go at your own speed.  The book is broken up
into 24 chapters, each taking more or less than an hour to read.  If you
pay attention and apply yourself, you could, I think, arrive at some
degree of understanding in the overall 24-hour time frame--give or take
a few hours.

I don't think you could do this with Perl, unless you already had a
programming language or two under your belt, or at least were already
familiar with many of the Unix tools it's based upon.  But Python is
clear, elegant, easy-to-read and understand, and there are very, very
few gotchas and surprises.  And I'm assuming, as you yourself said in a
separate post, "people who do Python are no dummies."

I picked up the basics of Python in perhaps four hours.  That's a
tribute to the language, not me.  Given an interested, attentive newbie,
I think it's entirely possible to teach programming and expose the
newbie to some of the finer things in life in 24 hours or so--with
Python.

> Ranting-about-dummy-booktitles-ly-yours,
>  

<ranting-is-misleading>-ly y'rs,
Ivan
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
Callware Technologies, Inc.
http://www.pauahtun.org 
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
Author:  Teach Yourself Python in 24 Hours