some problems for an introductory python test

[Hope Rouselle]

Hope Rouselle <hrouselle at jevedi.com> writes:

[...]

>> Granted you may have to restrict some features if [...]
>
> To let students use the entire language feels a bit weird in the sense
> that the group goes in so many different directions.  It definitely put
> teachers in a position they have to be --- I don't know the answer.
                              ^^^^^^^^^^
Sorry.  I meant ``they [hate] to be [in] --- I don't know the answer.''

And, alas, I also find many more typos, grammar and cosmetic
incoherences below, which I fix with brackets.  (Not that they were
needed.  Only this bit above seemed to lose the meaning of the author,
Your Truly.)

> It is not my case.  But I do think that holding a class with wildly
> different backgrounds, each going about in their own weird ways[,] is
> kinda odd.  It doesn't seem to bring people together --- on average.
>
> The better-idea brings people together by leveling everyone out.
> Unpopular languages give us this feature.  Students hardly ever master
> them.  It's a game nobody played.  The rules are very simple.  The
> implications are far-fetching.  Sometimes even the programmer-expert in
> class realizes he is less skilled than the total-novice that never
> handled a compiler: his tricks don't work in the new game.  (It's not
> that we don't allow him to use them.  They're not there.  They don't
> compile.)  (We take [Chess] players, Backgammon and Checkers players [the
> students], we teach them a new game, say, Go, and suddenly everyone is
> learning together.  Assume Go is unpopular.  It's very simple.  Everyone
> learns the rules quickly and we spend the semester looking into
> strategies.  Much better idea.)
>
>> 	For my Algorithm/Data Structure course (circa 1978), the instructor
>> allowed us to use any language /he/ could understand (so no SNOBOL). At the
>> time I'd gone through intro/advanced FORTRAN-4, intro/advanced COBOL, Sigma
>> Assembly, UCSD Pascal (not on the campus main computer, just a pair of
>> LSI-11s), and BASIC. The assignment was a "Hashed Head, Multiply-Linked
>> List". I chose to do that assignment using BASIC! In nearly 45 years, I've
>> only seen ONE real-world implementation of the HHMLL -- The file system
>> used by the Commodore Amiga. (Hash the first component of the path/name,
>> that maps to one of 64 entries in the root directory block; each entry
>> points the start of a linked list, follow the list until you reach the
>> block with the component name; if it is a directory block, hash the next
>> component and repeat; if it is a file block, the "entries" point to data
>> blocks instead of lists)
>
> Repeating my criticism with one more illustration.  When ``there's
> always more than one way to do it'', students can't even count on their
> classmates to help each other --- because each one is doing a different
> thing.  This is good in science, but what I like the most in schooling
> is working together and too much freedom like seems not very helpful in
> this direction.
>
> But both worlds [are] possible.  Use a limited tool (which is not
> computationally limited, quite the contrary) and tell them --- you can
> do anything you want with this.  [...] [Although] everyone is more or
> less original, the different solutions are never too far apart, so all
> the exchange is quite possible.