[Tutor] Still confused about Python references/objects

[D-Man]

On Mon, Apr 02, 2001 at 03:22:43PM +0100, alan.gauld@bt.com wrote:
| > I'd say this depends on what you consider to be 
| > the *goals* of a first language.  
| 
| I agree. If you want to teach the basic concepts of 
| programming: sequences, loops, branching, variables 
| etc. then static typing just gets in the way. 
| Python is great for that.

Ditto.  Actually, (IMO) static typing gets in the way most of the
time.  That's pretty much how I feel when I use Java.

| If you want to teach how computers work the Python 
| is not so good, C is better (assembler better still 
| but just toooo painful :-)

Did you learn x86 assembly?  I learned m68k assembly (required class
for my major) after Eiffel, C++, Java, and C (ok, so I didn't know
Java real well, and I had only read through a C tutorial but not
actually used it) and found it to be quite painful.  The prof then
spent a day giving an introduction to x86 assembly and its
architecture.  It looked many times more painful than the m68k was.  I
remember spending several hours getting 10.0 + 5.0 to yield 15.0 (the
m68k has no fpu so one lab was to implement IEEE floating point in
software -- ugh!).

| While they can all do the basics and write programs 
| (in Java) to a spec they are without exception ignorant 
| of how the computer actiually works. This in turn limits 
| them in all sorts of ways (performance tuning is a 
| complete mystery for example). We are now trying (so 
| far in vain) to find some kind of training course which 
| covers computer architectures etc.

Would a college course be an option?  If you are in western new york,
RIT has a good "Introcudtion to Assembly Language Programming" course
that basically covers the architecture as well.  The prof even gave an
example (simlified!) cpu and went over the various components and how
they work with the clock cycles, stepping through a couple of
instructions cycle-by-cycle.


-D  (who is very glad the bird didn't kill the snake)