Teaching python (programming) to children

[John Roth]

"Hung Jung Lu" <hungjunglu at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:8ef9bea6.0111050832.4474d66a at posting.google.com...
> Nomad <nomad***@***freemail.absa.co.za> wrote in message
news:<bfvcut8gadpces2t1pvq9kmv8j78d0u8nu at 4ax.com>...
> > IMHO, python would be one of (if not _the_) best language to teach
> > beginning programming - not just children, but as you mention, there
> > is the difficulty with the "englishness" of the language (or almost
> > any other programming language).
>
> I have my doubts about Python being the first programming language to
> teach. I see all too many newbies running into the problem of
> namespaces. How do you explain to them that "from xyz import *" is a
> bad thing, if they don't even understand what's going on behind the
> scene?

What happens if you want a particular toy from the box,
and you simply empty the entire box on the floor? Then what
happens if  you want toys from several boxes, and you empty
all of them on the floor.

There may be a better analogy, but this one should do.

> Also, how in the world can beginners understand what a hash
> table means? Are we going to tell them something like: "oh well, think
> of Python dictionary as a magic black box, you'll understand it later
> when you take a course in C/C++"?

Any child ready to learn a real programming language is
quite capable of understanding a set of keys with tags
hanging on a pegboard. It's a very natural analogy. Just look
at the pegboard and grab the right key!

There are undoubtedly other great analogies, but this one
will undoubtedly do.

John Roth