On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 8:58 PM, Rani Hod <[email protected]> wrote: > Now, the most Utopian thing would be if the Ministry of Education would >> suddenly decide that the 5-unit Bagrut in computers would consist of >> learning Python/OSS, including all the skills I mentioned above, and then >> the big universities will teach Python in their introductory programming >> courses instead of C and Java. That would be heaven, and in my opinion this >> will greatly improve Israel's tech scene in 5-10 years. >> >> But it would be very hard to make it happen, as the Ministry of Education >> is very conservative, and so are universities.[1] >> > > Update: Tel-Aviv University is having a pilot next semester (the spring > one) of teaching Introduction to Computer Science (for CS students) in > Python (rather than in Scheme, which is a variant of lisp). > > I happen to be the TA in this class, so I would be happy to hear > suggestions. > > Note that this is NOT an Introduction to Programming course. I do not > expect students to know Python's ins and outs. I'll mention documentation > and debugging, but won't go into licensing. >
That's great. Though I'd say that Scheme is pretty good too, from what I've heard. (I've never tried it myself.) If I understand correctly, it's much less commonplace than Python in the industry, but at least it's a high-level language which encourages good thinking, much more so than C++ or Pascal. I'm saying that because I try to be careful not to be too dogmatic on Python. It's my favorite language, but I try not to forget that there are other great languages too. I'm happy that TAU is going to teach some Python. Rani, would you consider talking a bit with your class about open-source, project management, source code control, using resources like StackOverflow, and stuff like that? I mean, I understand you're restricted by the official syllabus, but at least give them a taste of it so the interested ones could explore these things. And then you can tell them that if they want to go deeper into Python or open-source, the people in Python-IL will be happy to guide them. (I'd certainly be.) Ram.
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