> > The idea of a standard edu library though is a GREAT one. That would
> > provide a standard place for things like raw_input() (with a better
> > name) as well as lots of other "helper functions" useful to beginners
> > and/or students -- and all it would cost is a single line of boilerplate
> > at the top of each program ("from beginnerlib import *" or something
> > like that).
>
> I disagree for two reasons:
>
> 1) Even a single line of boilerplate is too much
> when you're trying to pare things down to the
> bare minimum for a beginner.
>
> 2) It teaches a bad habit right from the
> beginning (i.e. using 'import *'). This is the
> wrong foot to start a beginner off on.I agree. For an absolute newbie, Pythons import semantics are way, WAY down the road long after variables, numbers, strings, comments, control statements, functions etc. A third reason is that if these functions are packages in a beginnerlib module, then you would have to type "from beginnerlib import *" each and every time you want to use raw_input() from the Python console. -- mvh Björn _______________________________________________ Python-3000 mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-3000 Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-3000/archive%40mail-archive.com
