Experiences/guidance on teaching Python as a first programming language

[Terry Reedy]

On 12/13/2013 11:15 AM, wxjmfauth at gmail.com wrote:
> Le jeudi 12 décembre 2013 18:55:15 UTC+1, Terry Reedy a écrit :

>> If you mean cp65xxx (I forget exact numbers), MS Command Prompt fails,
>> not Python. One should not use any other code page, but only other code
>> pages work.

> Please, do not exaggerate too much.

I try not to, so in case I mis-remembered, I tried your experiment.

 >> echo "ሴé€㑖Ѓ⌴*"
 > works.

I cut the mixed alphabet input line and pasted into a *fresh* Command 
Prompt window on my USA Win 7 machine with all updates.

C:\Users\Terry>echo "?‚????*"
"?‚????*"

About what I expected, except for é becoming ,. Now the test. Change the 
code page and re-paste.
'''
C:\Users\Terry>chcp 65001
Active code page: 65001

C:\Users\Terry>echo "*"
The system cannot write to the specified device.
'''
This a major fail as all non-ascii chars are deleted when pasted (at 
least visibly) and the echo does not echo. There is no Python involved 
in this failure.

I am willing to believe that you might have gotten different behavior on 
your French Win 7 machine. Windows is not an international OS, but 
rather a collection of ghettoized national versions.

As I said before, Idle does work in this regard.

Python 3.4.0a4 (v3.4.0a4:e245b0d7209b, Oct 20 2013, 19:57:58) [MSC 
v.1600 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32
 >>> "ሴé€㑖Ѓ⌴*"
'ሴé€㑖Ѓ⌴*'

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy