How to Teach Python "Variables"

[Aaron Watters]

On Nov 27, 2:20 pm, MonkeeSage <MonkeeS... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Nov 27, 11:50 am, Donn Cave <d... at u.washington.edu> wrote:
....
> I agree with your point, but I think the distinction is this:
> pedagogical analogies should be truly *analogous* -- they should not
> be "analogies" that are only vaguely similar and require you to
> constantly say "...but ignore this difference and that
> difference...oh, and that one...you'll learn that later." I personally
> think the "ignore this for now" approach is detrimental.....

Yes, in theory.  And in theory, theory is the same as practice.
In practice there is too much to understand all at
once and in the beginning you have to say "don't worry about that
right now, consider it magic..."  Of course they should
eventually understand it.

Again, this is another place where Python shines, because
the front end scary magic is limited -- you can start out
with simple and useful imperative
straight line scripts and then move
into higher levels from there -- in contrast to C# and java
which require you to declare a class with static methods
even if you have no intention of writing any OO code.
Beginners find this incredibly confusing and scary.

Magic should never be permanent, however.
In the case of Struts or Spring there is magic
that no one is ever intended to truly understand.
Danger Will Robinson!  Danger!

This is my problem also with
most web application frameworks, even in Python
-- too much strange magic floats around in the air
-- usually in order to make things "easy" that I never thought
were hard in the first place.

  -- Aaron Watters
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