Teaching Python

[Fuzzyman]

Mediocre Person <mediocre_person at hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<513d6f09f74eb423c810692fb7bb1f46 at news.teranews.com>...
> Well, after years of teaching grade 12 students c++, I've decided to 
> make a switch to Python.
> 
> Why?
> 
>     * interactive mode for learning
>     * less fussing with edit - compile - link - run - debug - edit - 
> compile - link - run -.....
>     * lots of modules
>     * I was getting tired of teaching c++! Bored teacher = bad instruction.
>     * thought about tcl/tk but it's just too different syntactically 
> (for me, not my students!) after so much time with languages like 
> c++/ada95/pascal/BASIC/Fortran, etc.
>     * it appears to be FREE (which in a high school environment is 
> mightily important) from both python.org or activestate.com. I think I 
> like activestate's ide (under Win98) a bit better than idle, but your 
> comments/suggestions?
> 
> I've decided to give John Zelle's new book a try as a student 
> textbook--it's as good an introductory CS book in any language I've 
> seen. I've done a couple of small projects with tkinter, like what I 
> see, and would like to introduct my students to it, although Zelle 
> doesn't make use of it in his text.
> 
> So, what pitfalls should I look out for in introducing Python to 
> students who have had a year of Visual BASIC?


I don't know anything about visual basic.... but the difference
between an object and a name bound to that object bites *every* python
newbie at some point.....

Regards,

Fuzzy

http://www.voidspace.org.uk/atlantibots/pythonutils.html
> 
> Regards,
> 
> chackowsky dot nick at portal dot brandonsd dot mb dot ca <-- have the 
> spambots figured this one out yet?