On Nov 27, 11:52 am, "Chris Mellon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I would try to avoid talking > > in generalities about python variables versus C or > > lisp or whatever, unless I was teaching an upper division > > college programming languages survey class. > > I disagree, although it's not really on topic for the thread. There's > no reason why low level details need to be relegated to "upper > division" college classes. It shouldn't be in Programming Languages > 101, but it's something that I would expect a first year student who's > planning to pursue a programming career or a comp sci degree to be > exposed to. It's not out of place even in high school - that's where I > first learned C.
Well I learned PDP11 assembly and FORTRAN IV in high school and I'm still recovering (taking it day by day). Offline I would discuss anything the students wanted to talk about, but during lecture or in reading, etcetera I would try to stick to the "pythonic" way of looking at things without worrying about the underlying implementation, except in side references. Yes, some boxes and arrows would be very useful to explain shared side effects, but I'd keep the diagrams limited. I think thinking too much like "C" can lead to bad practices -- for example I've seen people use the global module name space more or less like any other hash table -- adding, deleting, changing freely -- and I think this was motivated by the "C" level understanding that it really is just another hash table. From a pythonic perspective you would never think of behaving this way except under extreme duress. -- Aaron Watters === http://www.xfeedme.com/nucular/pydistro.py/go?FREETEXT=revolting+delicate -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list