Experiences/guidance on teaching Python as a first programming language

[Mark Lawrence]

On 19/12/2013 01:49, Roy Smith wrote:
> In article <mailman.4372.1387390692.18130.python-list at python.org>,
>   Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> I've never contemplated writing a compiler, let alone actually written
>> one.  It's like the comments along the lines of "you can't call yourself
>> a programmer until you've mastered regular expressions".
>
> Who makes comments like that?  As far as I can tell, I'm the resident
> regexphile on this newsgroup, and I certainly don't say that.
>
> I find it frustrating that Pythonistas shy away from regex as much as
> they do.  Yes, Python strings have a rich set of built-in operations
> which provide easy ways to do a lot of things traditionally done with
> regexes in other languages.
>
> Regex is a powerful tool, and programmers will improve their skill set
> by knowing how to use them.  But that's not the same as saying you can't
> be a programmer if you don't know regex.
>

Idiots make comments like that, I've seen them in the past, and no, I 
can't remember where :)  As for me I'm not a regexphobe, more a 
stringmethodphile.  But I'm not going to use a dozen string methods when 
one fairly simple regex will do the same job in one hit.

-- 
My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask 
what you can do for our language.

Mark Lawrence