Python in High School

[Dan Upton]

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 1:10 PM, Jan Claeys <usenet at janc.be> wrote:
> Op Tue, 01 Apr 2008 10:27:18 -0700, schreef sprad:
>
>
>  > I'm a high school computer teacher, and I'm starting a series of
>  > programming courses next year (disguised as "game development" classes
>  > to capture more interest). The first year will be a gentle introduction
>  > to programming, leading to two more years of advanced topics.
>  > [...]
>
> > So -- would Python be a good fit for these classes?
>
>  There are at least 3 books about game programming in python:
>  <http://www.amazon.com/Game-Programming-Line-Express-Learning/dp/0470068221>
>  <http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Game-Development-Python-Pygame/dp/1590598725>
>  <http://www.amazon.com/Game-Programming-Python-Development/dp/1584502584>
>

This was the book I first bought when I started thinking about
learning Python, and it includes some pygame projects.  It uses all
game programming-based concepts for teaching, although many of them
are text-based and it only introduces pygame toward the end.

http://www.amazon.com/Python-Programming-Absolute-Beginner-Michael/dp/1592000738/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207169620&sr=1-6

I might add, you might do a disservice to students by starting them
with flashy graphics-based programming--IIRC, that was actually a part
of the complaints a couple months ago about why "Java schools" were
failing to turn out competent computer scientists: they focus too
heavily on something that looks good and end up missing the underlying
concepts.  Not that you'd ever do such a thing, I'm sure ;)  But my
intro CS professor in undergrad had us do two of the projects from our
textbook that involved GUI programming, then quickly dropped it,
partly because we were spending so much time of the implementation of
the projects 1) figuring out how to set up the GUI in Swing, and 2)
not really understanding why we're typing all this stuff to create
buttons and text fields.

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 4:01 PM, John Henry <john106henry at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>  And you are going to teach them Java?  Oh, please don't.  Let the
>  colleges torture them.  :=)
>

Side rant:  I think Java's just fine, as long as it's taught properly.
 I'd done a little bit of C and C++ programming when I was in high
school, trying to teach myself from a book, but I never really got
pointers or objects.  Going back to it after Java, it made so much
more sense, even though people will tell you "Java doesn't make you
learn about pointers."