Gmail eats Python

[Grant Edwards]

On 2015-07-26, Rustom Mody <rustompmody at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sunday, July 26, 2015 at 9:17:16 PM UTC+5:30, Grant Edwards wrote:
>> On 2015-07-26, Rustom Mody wrote:
>> 
>>> JFTR: Ive been using emacs for 20+ years.  And I have the increasing
>>> feeling that my students are getting fedup with it (and me).

[...]
>> Why do your students even _know_ (let alone care!) what editor you
>> use?
>> 
>> I admit it was years ago, but after attending three universities and
>> getting a BS in Computer Engineering and an MS in Computer Science and
>> Electrical Engieneering, I hadn't the foggiest idea what editors any
>> of the faculty used.  Nor would I have cared one way or the other if I
>> had known.
>
> Its 2015 now and any ½ decent teacher of programming, writes programs
> in front of the class. And debugs and hacks and pokes around
> OS-related stuff (ps, top and more arcane) etc. 

I still don't get it.

You're not teaching the _editor_, so why would it matter to anybody
which editor you're using to show them the code?  They can see the
code, and they can see what it does.  Are they too stupid to figure
out how to insert or delete a line using whatever editor they prefer?

I remember being shown live examples in a numerical programming class,
and not only was the _editor_ one I had never touched (or would), the
language and OS were ones I had never used and never would.  It didn't
detract from what was actually being _taught_ -- which was not "how to
edit and run programs on an Apple-something-or-other".

The live examples we were shown for APL not only used a differnt
editor, OS, and virtual machine that we used, it didn't even use the
same character set!

I guess I have unealisitically high expections of modern students.

... and back then all we had were zeros!


-- 
Grant