Experiences/guidance on teaching Python as a first programming language

[Rick Johnson]

On Tuesday, December 10, 2013 7:35:47 PM UTC-6, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:

> NAILS???? Nails were verboten in my high school wood
> working class... We used dowels and glue; chisels to carve
> dove-tails; etc.

That could be a result of two possibilities:

    1. Your high school years were before the great war, or:
    2. Your wood shop teacher was a Luddite, a sadist, or both!
    
FYI: Fastener technology has come a long way since the fall
of the of the "Amish empire". All that laborious joinery has
been surpassed by mass production of helical threads and
pneumatic drivers. What once took a "master craftsman" an
entire day to build could now be built by a novice in mere
minutes.

  Dovetails are nothing more than sadistic nostalgia --
  they give old men a "chubby" and young men a nightmare.
  
When are we going to realize that the goal, *ahem*, OUR
GOAL, is to delegate minutiae DOWNWARDS, building the
collective knowledge base layer by layer...

    ABSTRACTIONS people, ABSTRACTIONS!!!

Because, when you've got all your mental focus attuned to
carving intricate inter-meshing teeth into dense hardwoods
using razor sharp hand tools, you will be unable to see the
big picture, and furthermore, you might slip and cut your
finger off!