Hey Kirby,
kirby urner wrote:
Yeah, Python 3.x is not ready for prime time in several respects,
all talk of Eclipse aside, but that's to be expected as it's still
pretty new.
I've seen some buzz regarding the #python channel on Freenode,
where I gather some bots have been automatically steering
people away from the 3.x series.
edu-sig doesn't have any real time channel for assisting educators
or their students I don't think. Too over-specialized maybe.
Asynchronous is good enuff, no need to compete with #python
eh?
Belated congrats to Vern Ceder for stepping up to lead poster
session at usa.pycon 2011 in Atlanta per PSF blog.
http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2010/06/leadership-for-pycon-us-2011.html
Thanks. And I'm not forgetting that you played some part in getting me
into the poster session business in the first place... ;)
We'll be issuing the poster session CFP around the same time as the
regular talk CFP, and I really hope some edu-sig-ers will consider
proposing a poster. The whole idea behind posters at PyCon, IMO, is to
give a voice to speakers and topics that otherwise wouldn't make it
through the tough competition of regular talks, so don't be shy.
And it was quite frankly a blast! If you weren't at PyCon it's hard to
describe the super-mega-hallway-track-on-steroids atmosphere that
developed. So start working on those posters!
I think py-dev is aware of the situation with Python 3.x and
those planning to use that product for production roll outs will
continue encouraging its swift evolution.
Yeah, I gave a talk to a group of Pythonistas in Indy last week,
http://learnpython.wordpress.com/2010/06/26/indypy-meetup-and-python-3/
focusing on Python 3.x. They were an accomplished bunch, but not very
familiar with 3.x, except for one who was excited about the use of
Unicode, particularly in source code. His observation was that it made
Python much more accessible for speakers of, say, south Asian languages.
And yeah, I did mention your experiments along those lines.
There are some in the Python community who think that having to port
things to 3.x is going to sap the fun out of the language. I don't agree
- Python 3 is (deservedly) the language of the future and the future
WILL get here. ;)
As I was mentioning, the O'Reilly School of Technology has
already made the switch, as have the authors of Mathematics
for the Digital Age.[1]
And I gather that at least one class at UCLA is using my book, which is
solely Python 3.x (further book info in my sig).
Cheers,
Vern
Where I'm focused a lot goes back to spatial geometry and
VPython which I think gives just the right amount of "right brain"
gratification to let the "left brain" keep exercising those lexical
skills (programming, like algebra, like bash/posix/gnu, is
highly lexical).
Geometry + Geography is how the simulation games tend to
work, with a geography being potentially fantastic, a fantasy,
like Alice (in Wonderland) or Uru.[2] Or a game might be closer
to real, as when running macro and micro economics
simulations (e.g. electrical grid management vs. home
appliances management).[3]
You'll find me on mathfuture (Google group) and math-teach
@ Drexel among other places. A lot of times I don't think
the material is Pythonic enough to merit any notes to this list.
Sometimes I meet up with other posters to this list.
Using the Decimal class to explore limits some more is in
my queue. For example, the number e, as in "e ** (1j * math.pi) = -1"
may be expressed as lim (1 + 1/n) ** n.
import math
math.e ** (1j * math.pi)
(-1+1.2246467991473532e-16j)
n = 10000.
(1 + 1/n) ** n
2.7181459268249255
math.e
2.7182818284590451
My first exercise with the Hubble folks was to look at phi to
some 100 places and do a string match against a text file
with phi to some 100K places.
http://www.4dsolutions.net/presentations/holdenweb/decimaldemo.py
http://www.4dsolutions.net/presentations/holdenweb/PhiTo100000Places.txt
I did something similar with a Ramanujan series converging to pi,
however I felt my coding style was too ugly.[4]
This is a kind of real world convergence investigation that
computational math might include (as an exercise in coding skills),
whereas in the calculator era we stayed happy with much larger
epsilons.
Kirby
[1] http://www.skylit.com/mathandpython.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_McGee's_Alice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uru:_Ages_Beyond_Myst
[3] http://mathforum.org/kb/message.jspa?messageID=7111960&tstart=0
[4] http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2008/02/reflective-fragment.html
(has a link back to this archive)
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--
This time for sure!
-Bullwinkle J. Moose
-----------------------------
Vern Ceder, Director of Technology
Canterbury School, 3210 Smith Road, Ft Wayne, IN 46804
[email protected]; 260-436-0746; FAX: 260-436-5137
The Quick Python Book, 2nd Ed - http://bit.ly/bRsWDW
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