I am not totally sold on hackety; not having had access to MS Windows of late I haven't played with it.
I am saying that the whole business is great fun if approached right, and there at least hackety has much to teach us. I have had great success starting with ascii art, drawing boxes and triangles out of blanks and punctuation characters. By the time the kite figure is drawn, the utility of input() is obvious. I think you and Guzdial (and Andy Harrington who uses your book) are right to proceed to graphics fairly quickly. Guzdial and hackety also stress music. It's necessary to demonstrate the power and joy of the tool to get people interested. As a Python loyalist I see Python instruction as a way to strengthen the language and the community, but I'm getting the impression that the community won't be able to manage it. I agree in the long run that which language wins is relatively unimportant compared to the benefit of widespread programming competence, from the point of view of society or the individual student. >From the point of view of the specific language community it's another matter. Python has enough momentum in the areas where I work that I have no hesitation in sticking to it, but that being the case, I would rather that Ruby not be the language of the future. mt _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
