[Edu-sig] Progamming advice. (Was: Why MIT switched from Scheme to Python)

2009-04-06 Thread Gary Pajer
On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 4:43 PM, kirby urner kirby.ur...@gmail.com wrote: [...] What does the robot look like I wonder. Open source? API? Yes, I should Google, but I'm trying to track a Django in the real world workshop at the moment. Pycon. Packed room. They're showing the slide

Re: [Edu-sig] Progamming advice. (Was: Why MIT switched from Scheme to Python)

2009-04-06 Thread kirby urner
Hey excellent questions Gary, expect others will pipe up. What I see as a challenge with Python is precisely its liberal nature, as coders from earlier generations, cutting teeth in BASIC or FORTRAN, find there's sufficient procedural syntax to sort of barrel ahead with the same kind of thinking,

Re: [Edu-sig] Progamming advice. (Was: Why MIT switched from Scheme to Python)

2009-04-06 Thread Scott David Daniels
Gary Pajer wrote: ... Just this past weekend I was wondering where I could find such things, that is, help at learning good ways to structure a python program (for generic python, not specifically Django), written for the non-programmer scientist/educator. When I write my programs I always

Re: [Edu-sig] Progamming advice. (Was: Why MIT switched from Scheme to Python)

2009-04-06 Thread Gary Pajer
On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 3:34 PM, kirby urner kirby.ur...@gmail.com wrote: Hey excellent questions Gary, expect others will pipe up. What I see as a challenge with Python is precisely its liberal nature, as coders from earlier generations, cutting teeth in BASIC or FORTRAN, find there's

Re: [Edu-sig] Progamming advice. (Was: Why MIT switched from Scheme to Python)

2009-04-06 Thread kirby urner
There's the design patterns literature, sometimes fun to just eyeball so you get used to seeing patterns, even if different from the ones described. In some of my venues, there's a rule against any one person getting to code a whole project i.e. deliberate management strategy to force a minimum

Re: [Edu-sig] Do we teach computers when we write code?

2009-04-06 Thread Edward Cherlin
On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 3:05 PM, kirby urner kirby.ur...@gmail.com wrote: I'm wondering what others on this list think of this non-standard use of teaching when talking about programming a computer. The authors say we're teaching the computer I have a very simple take on this. It is an