[Chicago] python intro for 13 yo -- suggestions?

[Ian Bicking]

Peter Harkins wrote:
>>Anyway, I think mixing Javascript with the browser and the DOM, a
>>good/clean Javascript library, and some persistence on the server side
>>(implemented in Python or whatever) could be very interesting indeed.
> 
> 
> One of the things I'd like about the browser for an introductory
> environment is its limited set of primitives, but I see enough problems
> in the complexities of the DOM, reloading, content/style bifurcation and
> such that I don't agree that it'd be a good environment for beginners.
> But I'd be very happy to be proved wrong.

I think of the browser as a medium, more than the complete platform. 
Just like a screen with pixels is a medium -- there's certain primitive 
operations, and given (say) pygame you can get access to those 
operations on a pretty low level, but that's not what you'd introduce 
someone to.  (And even experienced programmers might not spend that much 
time on that level, though for web programming that seems less true.)

So you have some basic elements, and you have operations on them.  The 
elements in a browser are DOM nodes, which are pretty accessible.  The 
actual DOM *methods* aren't that great, but the nodes are workable -- 
you can see them, fiddle with them, they are pretty powerful and 
flexible.  Someone should then build an environment around that.

For instance, imagine you could click a toggle at the top of the screen 
"edit methods".  Once that is toggled on, you click on any DOM element, 
and a series of methods is shown (methods like onclick).  You can add 
Javascript to attach to that method, and that Javascript will have 
access to some nice methods.  I think it's even easy to add methods to 
DOM elements, so it could do "this.hide()".  Then you untoggle the 
method editor, the Javascript source disappears (hidden, really; maybe 
attached to an attribute), and you can interact with the page.  And 
there's some Wiki-ish save (but without Wiki markup, of course, since 
we're using DOM nodes and not ASCII), where the Javascript and the nodes 
are all saved together.

   Ian