kj wrote:
... I find it quite difficult to explain to my
students (who are complete newcomers to programming) all the
__underscored__ stuff that even rank noobs like them have to deal
with. =C2=A0(Trust me, to most of them your reply to my post would be
as clear as mud.)
Believe me, it's not me who's bringing this stuff up: *they*
specifically ask. That's precisely my point: it is *they* who
somehow feel they can't avoid finding out about this stuff; they
must run into such __arcana__ often enough to cause them to wonder.
If at least some rank beginners (i.e. some of my students) feel
this way, I suggest that some of this alleged __arcana__ should be
demoted to a more mundane everyday status, without the scare-underscores.
E.g. maybe there should be a built-in is_main(), or some such, so
that beginners don't have to venture into the dark underworld of
__name__ and "__main__".
Do you know about Kirby Urner's technique of calling such symbols,
"ribs," -- the access to the "stuff" Python is built from? One nice
thing about Python is that you can experiment with what these
"__ribs__" do without having to learn yet another language.
It seems nice to me that you can use a rule that says, "stick to
normal names and you don't have to worry about mucking with the
way Python itself works, but if you are curious, looks for those
things and fiddle with them."
--Scott David Daniels
scott.dani...@acm.org
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
