Re: [Edu-sig] Research on best language to use for teaching beginners

2015-10-02 Thread kirby urner
On Fri, Oct 2, 2015 at 10:16 AM, kirby urner wrote: > That brings up another point: once you've mastered Python's for, you also > have easy access to list, set and dict comprehension syntax. > ... and generator expression syntax, I should have added. :-D > I like Laura's ordering as well.

Re: [Edu-sig] Research on best language to use for teaching beginners

2015-10-02 Thread Andrew Harrington
Good point on order of keyword introduction affecting ease. I agree with yours, though having introduced functions first allows me to show how to use return to short-circuit a loop without having to add the extra syntax of break so early. Dr. Andrew N. Harrington Computer Science Department G

Re: [Edu-sig] Research on best language to use for teaching beginners

2015-10-02 Thread kirby urner
I'd say it's not just a matter of which keywords one chooses but how many. It'd be easy enough for Python to bloat with additional control structures the "fit the brain" of those used to thinking a particular way. I favor teaching any language with an assumption the student will always be learning

Re: [Edu-sig] Research on best language to use for teaching beginners

2015-10-02 Thread Nicholas H.Tollervey
I would take this sort of study with a pinch of salt... The quality and skill of the teacher as well as the aptitude and learning context of the students has a huge impact on the end result. There are numerous studies that show this. To my mind this invalidates the "use method X or Y in subject ar

Re: [Edu-sig] Research on best language to use for teaching beginners

2015-10-02 Thread Laura Creighton
I have found that if you begin teaching: for item in lst: and for letter in word: and then add break, and continue, and then teach for x in range(y): and then teach while (something): it all goes better than if you begin with while loops. But I don't know whether this means this is a bett

Re: [Edu-sig] Research on best language to use for teaching beginners

2015-10-02 Thread Andrew Harrington
Look at page 19 on how the loop syntax was used! It was used just for "repeat n times" - really simple, (and with a trivial useless loop body). "while" is for a more complicated situation (in general) where there the number of repetitions is controlled by a significant and flexible condition. S

Re: [Edu-sig] Research on best language to use for teaching beginners

2015-10-02 Thread kirby urner
This list begs the question of whether English language words should take precedence of those of another language or symbols such as used in APL, J and so on, for important verbs. I'm leery of such rankings anyway. Knowledge-by-survey is not the same as knowledge. Kirby On Fri, Oct 2, 2015 at

Re: [Edu-sig] Research on best language to use for teaching beginners

2015-10-02 Thread David Handy
On Thursday, October 1, 2015 4:50pm, "Andre Roberge" said: ... The best keywords (combining result from the two groups) are thought to include: repeat, again, loop, cycle The worst keywords are thought to include: foreach, while, echo, duplicate, for with "for" getting the worst res

Re: [Edu-sig] Research on best language to use for teaching beginners

2015-10-01 Thread Andre Roberge
On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 3:50 PM, Andre Roberge wrote: > Hi everyone, > > Google has failed me, and I'm hoping that someone on this list could > help... > > About a year or two ago, I read a study comparing different programming > languages used for beginners. I believe there were at least four