How to Teach Python "Variables"

[Aaron Watters]

On Nov 27, 11:52 am, "Chris Mellon" <arka... at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I would try to avoid talking
> > in generalities about python variables versus C or
> > lisp or whatever, unless I was teaching an upper division
> > college programming languages survey class.
>
> I disagree, although it's not really on topic for the thread. There's
> no reason why low level details need to be relegated to "upper
> division" college classes. It shouldn't be in Programming Languages
> 101, but it's something that I would expect a first year student who's
> planning to pursue a programming career or a comp sci degree to be
> exposed to. It's not out of place even in high school - that's where I
> first learned C.

Well I learned PDP11 assembly and FORTRAN IV in high school
and I'm still recovering (taking it day by day).

Offline I would discuss anything the students wanted to
talk about, but during lecture or in reading, etcetera
I would try to stick to the "pythonic" way of looking
at things without worrying about the underlying
implementation, except in side references.
Yes, some boxes and arrows would be
very useful to explain shared side effects,
but I'd keep the diagrams limited.

I think thinking too much like "C" can lead to bad
practices -- for example I've seen people use the
global module name space more or less like any other
hash table -- adding, deleting, changing freely
-- and I think this was motivated by the
"C" level understanding that it really is just another
hash table.  From a pythonic perspective you would
never think of behaving this way except under
extreme duress.

  -- Aaron Watters
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