* Martin P. Hellwig:
Alf P. Steinbach wrote:
* tm:
On 28 Okt., 07:52, "Alf P. Steinbach" <al...@start.no> wrote:
[Cross-posted comp.programming and comp.lang.python]
Looking at your topic '(Python in Windows)', without taking a
glimpse at your actual introduction, I have the following to say:
I think it is not a good idea to teach programming with a focus
on a specific operating system. Programming should IMHO be taught
without reference to an operating system. Otherwise you just teach
how to write unportable programs.
I think you're trolling a little. :-)
Without reference to an OS you can't address any of the issues that a
beginner has to grapple with, including most importantly tool usage,
without which it's not even possible to get started, but also, very
importantly, a file system.
Learning programming without tools and without using files (or only
using the common denominator for file systems in OSes X, Y and Z) is
sort of vacuous...
In addition there's the motivational factor.
I conclude from this that your assumption is that the reader might not
be competent enough to have basic portable knowledge of using a
computer. Which is fair enough, however I would suggest writing an
introduction to solve this fundamental absence of knowledge first before
introducing concepts like programming in python for which already are a
number of freely available/modifiable resources online.
You're right that I assume no knowledge of the command interpreter, and just the
most cursory knowledge of folder structure etc. However I would not phrase that
in terms of competence :-). Writing an introduction to solve that knowledge gap
problem is generally a good idea and I've done that a number of times. But
having done that I know very well what it entails when it includes What The
Student Should Know instead of just recipes. In an environment with other folks
that the student can seek help from it works well, but in a book it's rather
off-putting: "hey, it's page 90!, when are we getting to do real programming?".
And I'm not taking that "page 90" from thin air.
There's rather a lot to know about the environment that a program executes in if
one is going to create robust, dependable, generally usable programs, not just
toy examples. Unfortunately even most professional programs do not handle the
requirements of their environs very well, and I think that educators, even such
as I, have a responsibility to now start teaching students to do things right.
To take but one example that you may or may not be aware of, Microsoft's own
Windows Explorer, the main GUI shell for Windows, which presumably was made by
the best programmers available with the best knowledge of the program's
environment, is unable to handle (such as delete) files or folders with paths
greater than some 260 characters, is unable to handle filenames that differ only
in case and are in the same directory, and is unable to e.g. delete a folder
called "con" -- although such files & folders can very easily be created.
In addition to such things impacting on the design and functionality of programs
even just the tool usage is very complex and runs to a great many pages.
For example, for general tool usage in Windows the student needs to know about
levels of environment variable specifications and file associations, which in
turn requires knowledge of processes and the Windows registry database and
various commands.
And there's stuff you don't find in most textbooks that, in an introduction for
that knowledge gap, IMO needs to be there. For example, the student should
ideally know that it's not a good idea to write "MZ" as the first two characters
in a Windows text file, or to let a program do that. But instead of collecting
all this stuff in a very long-winded introduction, my idea now is to just/mostly
introduce it by way of programming examples, and then the student also gets the
connection to how this functionality is from a programming perspective.
I don't think it is a virtue to help adding to the pool of programmers
unaware of the command line, whatever platform that might be.
This comment baffles me.
But ignoring the above (I assumed and assumption you made, so it is
likely I've got it totally wrong :-) ), I think that creating such a
document provides a unique opportunity to document things that the more
experienced developers take for granted but is a complete enigma for
beginners in programming and using computers in general.
This comment also baffles me. :-)
Good luck with your effort!
Thanks!
Cheers,
- Alf
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