"Alf P. Steinbach" <al...@start.no> wrote in message
news:hc8pn3$dd...@news.eternal-september.org...
[Cross-posted comp.programming and comp.lang.python]
I may finally have found the perfect language for a practically oriented
introductory book on programming, namely Python.
C++ was way too complex for the novice, JScript and C# suffered from too
fast-changing specifications and runtime environment, Java, well, nothing
particularly wrong but it's sort of too large and unwieldy and
inefficient.
I don't know whether this will ever become an actual book. I hope so!
But since I don't know much Python -- I'm *learning* Python as I write --
I know that there's a significant chance of communicating misconceptions,
non-idiomatic ways to do things, bad conventions, etc., in addition to of
course plain errors of fact and understanding in general, to which I'm not
yet immune...
So I would would be very happy for feedback.
Have you ever done technical writing before? With positive feedback?
You use the highly commercial-looking activatestate website; what's wrong
with www.python.org?
You say elsewhere that you're not specifically teaching Python, but the text
is full of technical details specific to both Python and Windows, not much
actual programming!
Python has a lot of baggage which is OK if that's what's going to be used,
but otherwise is unnecessary confusion: where to put the program code (typed
in live or in a file, or some combination); whether to call the file .py or
.pyw; the difference between console and graphical programs and so on.
--
Bartc
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
