Experiences/guidance on teaching Python as a first programming language

[wxjmfauth at gmail.com]

Le mercredi 11 décembre 2013 11:45:43 UTC+1, Chris Angelico a écrit :
> On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 7:43 PM, Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > When you tell a story, it's important to engage the reader from the
> 
> > start.
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 8:39 PM,  <wxjmfauth at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > A few practical considerations, far away from theoretical
> 
> > aspects. Mainly for non ascii, understand non native English
> 
> > speakers.
> 
> 
> 
> And then, shortly after the beginning of the story, you need to
> 
> introduce the villain. Thanks, jmf, for taking that position in our
> 
> role-play storytelling scenario! A round of applause for jmf, folks,
> 
> for doing a brilliant impression of the uninformed-yet-fanatical
> 
> Knight Templar villain!
> 

I know Python since ver. 1.5.6 and used it intensively
since ver. 2.0 or 2.1 (?). I acquired some user experience.

Windows, Py2.(7), ascii. It is not a secret Python uses
ascii for the representation. As an example, this guy
who some time ago exposed his own solution to solve that
problem (btw, elegant and correct). ---  you wrote blah, blah
about his "mysterious code point", you did not recognize
he is (was) using Turkish Windows with the code
page cp1254 ---. It is a little bit fascinating, 20 years
after the creation a language, people are still fighting
to write text in a human way.

Unicode. For a first language, it may be not a bad idea
to use a language which uses "unicode à la unicode".

Windows, Py3, unicode. It is is infortunate, but it is
a fact Python has some problems with that platform (file
sytem encoding), -> potential problems which should not
exist for a beginner.
I am the first to recognize the win console is all but
friendly. If one wishes to use a unicode code page, Python
fails [*].

Python has plenty of good qualities, you (and others)
are discussing plenty of theoretical aspects.
I'm pointing the fact, one may be stuck simply because
one cannot display a piece of of text!
I'm not so sure, such a behaviour is expected from a
beginner learning a computer language.


[*] I toyed with go(lang) and ruby 2 (only in a unicode
perspective), I should say I had no problems. Why? No
idea, it is too far beyond my knowlege.

jmf