In a message of Thu, 05 Jul 2007 18:48:49 EDT, "Andy Judkis" writes: >I've just completed my 6th semester as a teacher, teaching 2 sections per > >semester of a 10th grade course that includes a 4 week introduction to >programming in Python. Here's a question from one of my exams: > > > > Write Python code that will ask the user how who is the best looking >teacher in the school. The program must loop until the user responds eit >her >"Mrs. McGrath" or "Mr. Judkis". If the use responds "Mr. Judkis", the >program must print out "Excellent choice." If the user responds "Mrs. >McGrath", the program must print out "Also a fine choice." If the user >responds with anything else, the program must print out "Wrong, sorry." a >nd >ask again. > > > >Rather than catalog my frustrations, let me just pose a question to you >all -- how much Python exposure do you think it should take before a stud >ent >should be able to answer this question? If a student can't even answer >this, is it reasonable to say that they have learned any programming at a >ll? >(I know that they might have learned something -about- programming, but t >hat >is not the same thing.) > > > >Thanks, > > > >Andy Judkis
One way to know a lot about programming, but to be unable to solve this exam question is to not know how to accept input from a terminal. Could they have read teacher names from a file and solved the question? from a command line? From a gui toolkit? Personally, I almost never need to use input or raw_input in real life, so I always have to look it up whenever I do find I need it. I suspect that I might fail your exam if you don't allow me to browse python docs while writing it. Laura _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
