Experiences/guidance on teaching Python as a first programming language

[rusi]

On Thursday, December 19, 2013 9:46:26 AM UTC+5:30, Roy Smith wrote:
>  rusi  wrote:

> > Soon the foo has to split into foo1.c and foo2.c.  And suddenly you need to
> > understand:
> > 1. Separate compilation
> > 2. Make (which is separate from 'separate compilation')
> > 3. Header files and libraries and the connection and difference


> It's pretty common here to have people ask questions about how import 
> works.  How altering sys.path effects import.  Why is import not finding 
> my module?  You quickly get into things like virtualenv, and now you've 
> got modules coming from your source tree, from your vitualenv, from your 
> system library.  You need to understand all of that to make it all work.

Yes agreed. Python is far from stellar in this regard.
Just as distutils got into the core at 2.3(??) now at 3.3 virtualenv(+pip+wheel)
is getting in. Belated but better late than never.

> None of that is specific to C.  Virtually any language (including 
> Python) allows a program to be split up into multiple source files.  If 
> you're running all but the most trivial example, you need to know how to 
> manage these multiple files and how the pieces interact.

Thats a strange thing to say.  In the abstract every language that
allows for significant programs supports separate units/modules.

Somewhere those units will map onto system entities -- usually though
not always files (think of PL-SQL inside Oracle).

Even assuming files, the lines drawn between interior (to the language)
and exterior (OS-facing) are vastly different.

C, Pascal, Python, Java, SML, APL -- all very different in this regard.