What is different with Python ?

[Peter Maas]

Andrea Griffini schrieb:
> On Sat, 11 Jun 2005 21:52:57 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com>
> wrote:
> 
> 
>>I think new CS students have more than enough to learn with their 
>>*first* language without having to discover the trials and tribulations 
>>of memory management (or those other things that Python hides so well).
> 
> 
> I'm not sure that postponing learning what memory
> is, what a pointer is and others "bare metal"
> problems is a good idea.

I think Peter is right. Proceeding top-down is the natural way of
learning (first learn about plants, then proceed to cells, molecules,
atoms and elementary particles). If you learn a computer language
you have to know about variables, of course. You have to know that
they are stored in memory. It is even useful to know about variable
address and variable contents but this doesn't mean that you have
to know about memory management. MM is a low level problem that has
to do with the internals of a computer system and shouldn't be part
of a first *language* course.

The concepts of memory, data and addresses can easily be demonstrated
in high level languages including python e.g. by using a large string
as a memory model. Proceeding to bare metal will follow driven by
curiosity.

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Peter Maas,  M+R Infosysteme,  D-52070 Aachen,  Tel +49-241-93878-0
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