--- Paul McGuire <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On May 26, 8:48 pm, Steve Howell > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > I'm thinking you could actually have a progression > > from a 1 line program up to a 50-line program. > The > > number 50 is kind of arbitrary, but my gut says > that > > by a 50-line program, you will have demonstrated > > almost every useful concept. > > > > If there is anything arbitrary here, I'd say it is > your "increment > each example by one source line" constraint. This > can force you to > use some bad coding practices to meet your target > line count for a > given example. >
I understand your point, but I'm sticking to the concept for now. My intent with the progression isn't so much for each example to thoroughly teach a concept (although I could certainly hyperlink to a more in-depth treatment), but really more to give a bird's eye view of the language very quickly. I recently helped teach a Java programmer to program in Python, and he learned a lot just by seeing simple examples. So I guess my target audience isn't so much people learning how to program; it's more for programmers getting their first exposure to Python. On the other side of the fence, I recently tried to relearn a bit of Ruby, and I remember being frustrated by their tutorials, as really, I just wanted to see a bunch of simple programs, and I can figure out mostly what they're doing. Instead, I had to wade through verbose descriptions of what a variable is, rules for how you construct identifiers, etc. > Maybe try this approach: pick your top 10/20/50 > language features and > develop concise examples. Then order the examples by > length as a first > cut (longer examples probably *are* more complex), > and then reorder a > bit to handle pre-requisites (introduce a minimum of > new features, > preferably 1, per example). Overall, I'd have a > tough time picking > just 10 language features to illustrate, but there > are probably 10-20 > basic features that will get new people onto fairly > productive > ground. Pick 20 as your example count (50 sounds a > bit long), and > stick to it, and then later add "20 More Little > Programs" for the next > wave of examples in increasing complexity. > My only reluctance with that approach is that it sounds like a little more work than I'm ready to take on right away. But it's on the Wiki now, so maybe other folks can help me grow it. > One other nit to pick: have your example classes > inherit from object, > to get new people using new-style classes from the > get-go. > My only fear here is that when old classes go away (Py3K? I don't know), that practice may become obsolete. But on a more general note, I welcome folks to just clean up my examples on the Wiki if I accidentally introduce some bad practices...but preserving line counts. :) ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss an email again! Yahoo! Toolbar alerts you the instant new Mail arrives. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/mail/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
