Timothy wrote:
> I am a high school student. "SAGE Beginners Book" seems to be more
> about computation in general than how to use SAGE to explore
> mathematics and get help on math homework.
Computation in general is deeply ingrained into the fabric of Sage and
therefore Sage users need to have a solid understanding of it. As
William indicated in the slides he posted recently, knowing how to
program in Python is an absolute must before using Sage at all. :-)
Since the book is targeted at non-programming beginners, it must teach
them how to program before it can teach them how to use Sage. I have
found that before teaching a person how to program, it helps to
provide them with an explanation of how a computer actually works.
Therefore, the first 20 or so pages of the book provide this
explanation.
They are not going to understand everything they read in these 20
pages because it packs a significant number of subtle concepts into a
small space. As they start working through the "learning how to
program" part of Sage, however, they will be referred back to these 20
pages for the explanations of what is really going on behind the
scenes.
For example, when the book needs to explain what
var('a,b,c,sum,result') is doing, the foundation has already been laid
for this explanation. :-)
Ted
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