Intro Chapter on OOP using Prothon

[David MacQuigg]

I've been working with the folks at www.prothon.org trying to come up
with a variation on Prothon that will preserve the ability to
automatically translate Python to Prothon, while not limiting their
wonderful creativity in developing all kinds of useful extensions to
Python.  My motiviation is having a language I can teach to electronic
design engineers in two days.  Currently that is Python without
classes.  I'm intriqued by the idea of adding OOP with only a few more
hours of instruction.

I've written a draft of a chapter as a replacement for the OOP
chapters in Learning Python, 2nd ed. See
ece.arizona.edu/~edatools/Prothon/Prototypes.doc (or .htm if you can't
read teh MS Word .doc format).  This chapter makes some assumptions
about Prothon syntax that are not consistent with the current
implementation, but I felt it better to keep things simple and
self-consistent for now, and add the complexities later when the
language is stable.

Comments on the chapter are welcome.  I am also interested in any
comments on the question -- Can we do this with Python?  Prothon is a
real breakthrough in simplification (elimination?) of classes.  If
"prototypes" are done right, we can enjoy the new simpler style
without having to re-write all our old programs or give up anything we
now have in Python.

-- Dave