Teaching python (programming) to children

[Skip Montanaro]

    Hung> I have my doubts about Python being the first programming language
    Hung> to teach. I see all too many newbies running into the problem of
    Hung> namespaces. How do you explain to them that "from xyz import *" is
    Hung> a bad thing, if they don't even understand what's going on behind
    Hung> the scene? Also, how in the world can beginners understand what a
    Hung> hash table mean? Are we going to tell them something like: "oh
    Hung> well, think of Python dictionary as a magic black box, you'll
    Hung> understand it later when you take a course in C/C++"?

I think the assumption is that you don't give them everything at once, and
you can simply avoid teaching them the "bad" stuff like "from m import *".
Regarding dictionaries, I would tell them, "Think of a Python dictionary as
a regular dictionary.  You look up a 'word' and it gives you the
'definition' of that word."  The correspondence is good enough to get them
going I think.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/