[Tutor] a couple of ideas I've been bouncing around

Rob Andrews rob@jam.rr.com
Thu, 14 Jun 2001 09:57:38 -0500


In my ongoing quest for novel (twisted?) ways to add even more color to the
Python universe, I've come up with a few more ideas. I picked up Trivial
Pursuit Genus 5 the other day and thought it would be interesting to produce
a Python module for it, essentially a collection of questions and answers
about Python, broken down by general category (e.g., "Python Mythology",
"Data Structures", "Python History", etc.) using a color scheme compatible
with the one Trivial Pursuit uses. This could be printed up on some nice
card stock and actually used with the boxed game set.

The second idea is an actual test. Brainbench (http://www.brainbench.com)
offers a $19.95 certification in Python 1.5. With all the keen, experienced
minds and nearly inexhaustible number of questions archived on this list, we
should be able to come up with a nice test that generates a brief,
meaningful report on how one performed on it. """You were strong enough to
tutor another person in the areas of "strings" and "exception handling". You
seemed competent in "flow control" and "sockets". You should study more on
"OOP" and "embedding". You answered 87% correctly, soundly passing Python
Tutor Certification."""

I think anything we do along these general lines would help provide another
great learning tool and a healthy bit of fun all around.

Rob

"Perl is worse than Python because people wanted it worse." Larry Wall
(Creator of Perl), 14 Oct 1998
Useless Python: http://www.lowerstandard.com/python/