[Edu-sig] What version of Python to teach ....

[kirby urner]

Laura is reminding that Recognition is easier than Recall.

Recognition:  the native speaker is doing the work, the learner is
listening, following, passively concentrating

Recall:  the learner is speaking with few cues, blank canvas, has to
pull up everything herself, much harder.

That's from natural language learning, but with computer languages
it's the same.  You need to eyeball lots of code.

However, in Pythonic Math, we have modules of ample length (called
scaffolding) that doesn't constitute entire commercial applications.
They're "short stories", not novels like 'War and Peace'.  Those might
come later.

Correction:  URL to my slides for 'GIS in Action' conference this
coming Tuesday:

http://www.4dsolutions.net/presentations/gis_2009_workshop.pdf

Comments welcome.  It's about our new FOSS-based pre-college
curriculum pilots, with an emphasis on "place based education", all
the rage among charters these days, especially in Alaska, but Oregon
too somewhat.

Kirby

On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 8:12 PM, Laura Creighton <lac at openend.se> wrote:
> In a message of Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:25:29 PDT, Edward Cherlin writes:
>>No, I'm suggesting that an introductory course on Python 3.0 can make
>>use of converted and lightly massaged code, and ignore Python 2.x
>>until students have wrapped their minds around one version. Computer
>>Science students are not necessarily interested in commercial
>>programming, and may never need to learn 2.x. People learning Python
>>in order to write their own programs, ditto. The original question was
>>how to get enough educational examples in Python 3.0.
>
> But the ability to read code is not something that should be left to
> commercial programmers.  Unless you are at an age where reading itself
> is problematical, there is no better way to become a better programmer
> than to spend an hour a day reading other people's well-written code.
> This 'how to read code' is something that belongs in everybody's
> Introductory course, and it is something that we are going to have to
> pay special attention to these days, if you are teaching Python 3.0,
> rather than assuming that students will learn how to read code just by
> following your teaching exercises.  The code that you are likely to
> assign to students as reading assignments, and the code (aside from
> the Python interpreter and the standard library itself) that they are
> likely to want to read will be 2.x code.
>
>>For the larger problem of converting existing 2.x libraries and
>>applications in order to have more 3.0 to read, that will solve itself
>>in the normal course of events. See Guido's advice.
>
>>http://docs.python.org/3.0/whatsnew/3.0.html
>
> This assumes that the creators of 2.x programs intend to move their
> old code to 3.0.  For a large fraction of the existing programs out
> there, this simply will never happen.  It has been a long time since
> these programs were in active development, they are stable, and nobody
> wants to go around poking a hornet's nest with a stick if they don't
> have to.  The importance of lessons in 'how to read 2.x programs' may
> diminish as time goes on, but I predict that it will never go away
> altogether.
>
> Laura
>
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