Python for Newbies

[Alf P. Steinbach]

* rm:
> On Dec 9, 9:46 pm, "Alf P. Steinbach" <al... at start.no> wrote:
>> * rm:
>>
>>> Here is a new tutorial that may be a good starting point for learning
>>> Python.
>>> http://www.themaemo.com/python-for-newbies/
>> Looks nice.
>>
>> I have two comments: (1) what is "the N900"?, and (2) the naming convention,
>> using 'Num' for a variable and 'clsAddress' for a class, is opposite of the
>> usual Python convention where one'd write 'num' and 'Address'.
>>
>> Shameless plug for my own writings, an introduction to /programming/ for
>> newbies, using Python  --  this work is progressing slowly but steadily:
>>
>>    <url:http://preview.tinyurl.com/ProgrammingBookP3>
>>
>> which is in Google Docs; a table of contents available as text file (it's not
>> complete wrt. to latest stuff I added) and also in the PDF files themselves.
>>
>> Comments very welcome! :-)
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> - Alf
>>
>> PS: The last three or four paragraphs in ch 2 were sort of negative so I've
>> replaced them with one single short much more upbeat paragraph. Working...
> 
> One of the reasons I started writing this tutorial was because I found
> the lot of existing tutorials lacking in their approachability by
> people new to programming.  Just about all of them were either not
> comprehensive enough, or seemed written by geniuses for geniuses. I
> hope you will allow me to quote a little excerpt from your tutorial
> that makes my point quite eloquently:
> 
> "I have to use as-yet-unexplained language features in order to
> present examples that do relevant things, because it would be too much
> to explain the language features & concepts here.  These features are
> explained in later chapters, so for now you can just adopt a very
> casual attitude, hey, it works!"
> 
> Don't get me wrong, your approach probably works for a certain type of
> people.  But there are a lot of us that find this approach very
> difficult to follow.  The approach of this tutorial is gradually
> introduce new concepts so that the student can follow along at a
> logical and pleasant pace.

Well, we agree on that. :-)

You just quoted the above a little out of context. It's about the code examples 
in ch 1. Ch 1 is /not/ about programming: it's about tool usage, getting 
started, and next to nothing about the language or programming is discussed.

So from my POV as author that criticism is like criticizing a bus driver for not 
explaining the technical workings of the bus when he's taking potential new bus 
drivers on a tour of the bus routes they may/will be driving later.

Of course if the potential new drivers expect to be educated about the bus' 
technical stuff on that tour, just ignoring or not registering the up-front 
information about the tour, then they may grumble about only being shown some 
scenery, and what's this all about places and distances and routes?

So, I think you read that with wrong expectations.


>  Yes, it has a disadvantage.  The examples
> can't be too elaborate.

But here we disagree somewhat.

If you look at ch 2 you'll see that with Python examples can be quite impressive 
without using more than just the tiniest little subset of the language.

That is, when one has room to discuss things (difficult in an web based tutorial 
like yours, or like my once-upon-a-time C++ tutorial, but now I do have that 
room for discussion and guidance!) then a student's first examples do not need 
to be text only or dry academic. :-)


>  But, the purpose of tutorial, to teach the
> language, is better accomplished this way.  If I was teaching a group
> of people the English language, I would not go about doing so with a
> George Gordon Byron poem.

Oh, I think you should!

Especially considering that his daughter Augusta Ada was the world's first 
programmer and could be suspected of having an affair with Augustus de Morgan 
(who together with George Boole invented boolean logic, they published their 
works in the same week, and anyway was Augusta's private math tutor).

Or perhaps start more easy, with Augustus de Morgan's infamous recursive fleas 
poem (ah, one may suspect some connection to Lord Byron there)!


Cheers,

- Alf