Hi Bryan, I'm not trying to water down Python too much, but I want them to have a great experience right out of the box. They have both been programming in Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu/) now, so their expectations are that they can get up and running with some graphics moving around and doing things, under their control, pretty quickly. I'm trying to build a lightweight library on top of Pygame to provide that experience. I've tried showing my seven-year-old straight Python, getting it to read his name from the command-line and say hello to him, but he doesn't really get why you would want to do that. To him, a program involves graphics, and since he's used to making programs with graphics already, it's hard to argue with that.
On the other hand, Scratch sets up a pretty constrained environment: No strings, variables can only be numbers, no return values (asynchronous message sends only), no file access, no network access, can only draw on the background, not on sprites (programatically: it includes a drawing tool for editing sprites), no runtime instantiation, no subroutines, etc. It's actually amazing what you can do in such a constrained environment, and the tools it does give you are inspiring, but think kids who hit the limits of Scratch and turn to Python will be disappointed and frustrated unless there is a path for them to get productive quickly. Of course, you mileage may vary. My goal and yours are the same: Get them up to speed with Python, not a dumbed-down mini-language or environment. But on the other hand, *I* feel more productive in Scratch (until I hit the wall of its limitations), so I don't really think providing a nice graphical starter kit for Python is a bad thing. --Dethe _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
