[triangle-zpug] static list in python

[Josh Johnson]

Reading that, if I were you, I'd go with globals for now :)

But remember that everything (seriously, EVERYTHING) about python is 
object oriented. It's hard to avoid it for long...

JJ

Joseph Mack NA3T wrote:
> On Fri, 14 Mar 2008, Bradley A. Crittenden wrote:
>
>   
>> from your description it sounds like you're using python 
>> without taking advantage of any object oriented features. 
>> you can do that, but you'll end up scratching your head 
>> about how to do 'obvious' things.
>>     
>
> <scratching_head>hmm, I see</scratching_head>
>
>   
>> how about just making a class and setting the list as an 
>> instance variable?  or it could be a class variable.
>>     
>
> I wish this had showed up in one of my google searches :-(
>
> I wanted a static list to keep track of the history of the 
> game nim that I'm using as a coding exercise for an 
> introductory class in programming for 7th graders. This is 
> their first piece of coding after "hello world", "hello 
> world" in a function, conditional evaluation and iteration. 
> I was hoping to keep track of the game history with a 
> function (to show modular programming) rather than spread 
> the state tracking code all over the global namespace.
>
> I've had minimal experience with python, and had my own 
> course outline ready (bash, perl, linux install and admin, 
> C, C++) before I declared that I'd do the class. I had 
> expected that they'd be the usual oppressed and compliant 
> kids that the educational system turns out and hadn't 
> expected that they'd have an opinion on what they wanted, so 
> I was more than surprised to have them announce that they 
> wanted python. At that stage I was committed to teaching 
> them something and figured if I couldn't learn python fast 
> enough to keep 2 weeks ahead of a bunch of 7th graders, I 
> should take myself out the back and shoot myself.
>
> Chris Calloway mentioned my course earlier on this list.
>
> http://www.austintek.com/python_class/
>
> At the moment they aren't writing code blocks more than a 
> couple of lines long. I don't want to start them on classes 
> until they have a lot more coding experience and can code 
> blocks 20-50 lines long without external help. I hadn't 
> expected that python would get this complicated so fast ;-) 
> I thought static would do it for sure - it's worked 
> everywhere else. It's obvious that you don't need static if 
> you have an object. I'll keep your code to do a rewrite 
> sometime later in the course using a game_history object.
>
> Thanks Joe
>
>