Teaching Python

[Passiday]

Hello,

I am planning to teach Python to a group of high school students, who have in-depth interest in programming, hacking etc.

I am looking for some good material, what I could use as a basic guide whenpreparing the classes plan for the course - website or book, what would roll out the topic methodologically gradually. The target audience is someonewho knows most basics of the programming, but doesn't mind being reminded about them now and then.

Thanks for any suggestions!

Passiday

 

[geremy condra]

Hello,

I am planning to teach Python to a group of high school students, who have in-depth interest in programming, hacking etc.

I am looking for some good material, what I could use as a basic guide when preparing the classes plan for the course - website or book, what would roll out the topic methodologically gradually. The target audience is someone who knows most basics of the programming, but doesn't mind being reminded about them now and then.

Thanks for any suggestions!

When you say 'hacking', you mean.... ?

Geremy Condra

 

[Dan Stromberg]

When you say 'hacking', you mean.... ?

Presumably he meant the real meaning of the word, not what the press
made up and ran with.

 

[Dan Stromberg]

Hello,

I am planning to teach Python to a group of high school students, who have in-depth interest in programming, hacking etc.

I am looking for some good material, what I could use as a basic guide when preparing the classes plan for the course - website or book, what would roll out the topic methodologically gradually. The target audience is someone who knows most basics of the programming, but doesn't mind being reminded about them now and then.

http://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide/

That page has links to lists of tutorials that either assume you know
nothing about programming yet, or have some other languages under your
belt already.

 

[geremy condra]

Presumably he meant the real meaning of the word, not what the press
made up and ran with.

Even security professionals use it both ways. Especially in the
context of a room full of teenagers, it seems reasonable to ask.

Geremy Condra

 

[John Bokma]

Hello,

I am planning to teach Python to a group of high school students, who
have in-depth interest in programming, hacking etc.

I am looking for some good material, what I could use as a basic guide
when preparing the classes plan for the course - website or book, what
would roll out the topic methodologically gradually. The target
audience is someone who knows most basics of the programming, but
doesn't mind being reminded about them now and then.

So you want them to Dive into Python [1]? ;-)

[1] Google for it, it's an online book, free downloadable for both 2.x
and 3.x

 

[Alec Taylor]

Here are a few tutorials which may be helpful for notes &etc:

Author,Series,Lectures,Slides/Documentation,Assignments,Difficulty
MIT,A Gentle Introduction to Programming Using Python,on iTunes
Uÿhttp://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u...ng-python-january-iap-2010/index.htm,Beginner
Programmer
Python,Tutorial,N/A,http://docs.python.org/tutorial/,N/A,Average or
beginner programmer
Python,N/A,N/A,http://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide/NonProgrammers,N/A,Beginner
or non-programmer
Google,Google's Python Class,on YouTube (see Sidebar for
links),http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python-class/index.html,"See
""Python Exercises"" in sidebar",Good programmer

(Unfortunately can't paste table... but here is what the table looks
like: http://i51.tinypic.com/zof9yt.png, email me directly for table)

 

[Sourav]

Hacking??

 

[Sourav]

Lot of tutorials on net. Specially Python's own site.
Dive into Python seems a good start

 

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

To be fair, the press already had its own pejorative meaning of “hack”
before the engineering and computing term, so the association was
probably inevitable.

Comes from all the hack writers they hire <G>

 

[Chris Angelico]

Hacking??

1) Tinkering, programming, building furniture with an axe.

2) Breaking and entering in the electronic world.

I assume the OP meant #1, although when I talk about "hacking" in this
sort of sense, I'm thinking more in terms of tinkering with the
language itself (Python scripting is writing .py files and running
them, Python hacking is grabbing the source, fiddling with it, and
running make). Unfortunately the second sense of the word is the only
one a lot of people know.

Chris Angelico

 

[harrismh777]

I am planning to teach Python to a group of high school students, who have in-depth interest in programming, hacking etc.

I am looking for some good material, what I could use as a basic guide when preparing the classes plan for the course - website or book, what would roll out the topic methodologically gradually. The target audience is someone who knows most basics of the programming, but doesn't mind being reminded about them now and then.

You can tell the corporate types... hacking might be a bad thing...


I am now and forever will be a joyful hacker...

In all seriousness here, I recommend the following book at least for the
instructor, and perhaps for the students as well... although it is a
little pricey and it is massive -- 1150 pages !

The very ~cool thing about this particular book is that it covers 2.6
and 3.x between the same covers in an integrated way! ... believe me,
you will appreciate this... because more has changed than most Python
biggots are willing to admit... a lot more.


Lutz, Mark, "Learning Python: Powerful Object Oriented Programming,"
4th Edition, (Sebastopol: O'Reilly, 2009).

1150 pages


This book has a follow-on manual (same author) of another ~1600 pages
called "Programming Python". Its 4th edition *does not* cover Python2.x/
Also, it is not intended as a tutorial, and Lutz expects the "Learning
Python" book to be a pre-req.

The 2nd edition of Summerfield's "Programming Python 3" is also
excellent material, but again, only covers Python3.x with nothing to say
about 2.x/


But, having said all of that... if these kids are brand new to Python,
then I would take them into Summerfield's book right from the get-go and
never look back. Python3 is the future of this language, and there
really isn't any reason to learn Python2 unless you're going to expect
these kids to have to maintain old code... get them on the new wave...


Summerfield, Mark, "Programming in Python 3: A Complete Introduction
to the Python Language," 2nd Edition, (New York: Addison-Wesley,
2010)

630 pages





(a word about hacking, this is free...)

I used to be an IBM'er. Every two years whether we liked it or not we
had to attend a diversity training session and see the "hacker" movie
about lawlessness and threats to intellectual property... and other B.S.
(uh, that's B as in B and S as in S)

<sorry, I digressed again>

I am now and forever will be a joyful hacker... a recovering corporate
slave whose intellectual property has been sucked out (picture aliens
sucking your brains out here, with a galactic teflon straw, kinda like
the remake of War of the Worlds)... for about 25 years until the light
of freedom dawned and I broke free and clear from the neo-Orwellian
maelstrom...

<sorry, did it again.... rats>



kind regards,
m harris

 

[Steven D'Aprano]

To be fair, the press already had its own pejorative meaning of “hackâ€
before the engineering and computing term, so the association was
probably inevitable.

It's hardly just the press. "Hack" is a fine old English word:

"The jungle explorer hacked at the undergrowth with his machete."

"I was so hungry, I didn't take the time to neatly slice up the meat, but
just hacked off a chunk and stuffed it in my mouth."

"Good lord, have you seen the completely botched job that carpenter has
done? He's such a hack!"

Given the wide range of pejorative meanings of "hack" going back at least
to the 19th century (to cut roughly without skill, a mediocre and
talentless writer, a person engaged to perform unskilled and boring
labour, a broken-down old horse, etc.), what's remarkable is that anyone
decided to start use "hack" in a non-pejorative sense.

 

[Chris Angelico]

It's hardly just the press. "Hack" is a fine old English word:

"Can you teach me how to hack?"

"Sure. Go to the tobacconists and buy him out, then smoke the lot.
You'll be hacking like a pro in no time!"

Chris Angelico

 

[Terry Reedy]

It's hardly just the press. "Hack" is a fine old English word:

"The jungle explorer hacked at the undergrowth with his machete."

"I was so hungry, I didn't take the time to neatly slice up the meat, but
just hacked off a chunk and stuffed it in my mouth."

"Good lord, have you seen the completely botched job that carpenter has
done? He's such a hack!"

Given the wide range of pejorative meanings of "hack" going back at least
to the 19th century (to cut roughly without skill, a mediocre and
talentless writer, a person engaged to perform unskilled and boring
labour, a broken-down old horse, etc.), what's remarkable is that anyone
decided to start use "hack" in a non-pejorative sense.

How about "The indefatigable exploror hacked through the seemingly
impenetrable jungle for a month to arrive at the well-hidden ancient
temple. Since it was itself covered in overgrowth, he hacked away
another month to reveal it in its ancient glory." Make the appropriate
substution of code jungles and hard-won prize.

 

[harrismh777]

1) Tinkering, programming, building furniture with an axe.

2) Breaking and entering in the electronic world.

Not so much.

In the comp.lang.python community hacking is most easily identified with
the many one-liners that show up... that is the underlying spirit of
hacking.

==== block quote from RMS "On Hacking"=======

It is hard to write a simple definition of something as varied as
hacking, but I think what these activities have in common is
playfulness, cleverness, and exploration. Thus, hacking means exploring
the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness.
Activities that display playful cleverness have "hack value".

Hackers typically had little respect for the silly rules that
administrators like to impose, so they looked for ways around. For
instance, when computers at MIT started to have "security" (that is,
restrictions on what users could do), some hackers found clever ways to
bypass the security, partly so they could use the computers freely, and
partly just for the sake of cleverness (hacking does not need to be
useful).

==== / block quote from RMS "On Hacking"=======

You can find the entire article here:

http://stallman.org/cgi-bin/showpag...on-hacking.html&term=hacking&type=norm&case=0


kind regards,
m harris

 

[Stefan Behnel]

Ben Finney, 20.04.2011 02:06:

To be fair, the press already had its own pejorative meaning of “hackâ€
before the engineering and computing term

Not anywhere outside of the English language that I'm aware of, though. In
German, it's a computing-only term that's used in both contexts by those
who understand why the pointer is moving over the screen when moving the
mouse, and almost exclusively in a bad context by those who write news
paper articles (and, consequently, by those who innocently read them).

Stefan

 

[Westley Martínez]

Ben Finney, 20.04.2011 02:06:

Not anywhere outside of the English language that I'm aware of,
though. In German, it's a computing-only term that's used in both
contexts by those who understand why the pointer is moving over the
screen when moving the mouse, and almost exclusively in a bad
context by those who write news paper articles (and, consequently,
by those who innocently read them).

Stefan

O Lord, I'd hope we'd be speaking for English here. But really, hack
has always been a negative term. It's original definition is chopping,
breaking down, kind of like chopping down the security on someone elses
computer. Now I don't know where the term originally came from, but the
definition the media uses is quite a fair use. Why should we call
ourselves hackers anyways? I don't smoke. I'm no different from anyone
else, I just happen to know a lot about computers. Should we call
people who know a lot about the economy hackers, too, or perhaps we
should call them economists....

 

[MRAB]

O Lord, I'd hope we'd be speaking for English here. But really, hack
has always been a negative term. It's original definition is chopping,
breaking down, kind of like chopping down the security on someone elses
computer. Now I don't know where the term originally came from, but the
definition the media uses is quite a fair use. Why should we call
ourselves hackers anyways? I don't smoke. I'm no different from anyone
else, I just happen to know a lot about computers. Should we call
people who know a lot about the economy hackers, too, or perhaps we
should call them economists....

As I understand it, "hacking" is about not doing the job "properly".
When trying to make something, a hacker will use the equivalent of duct
tape to hold things together.

A computer hacker doesn't write the requirements of the software or
draw Jackson Structured Programming diagrams, etc, but just thinks
about what's needed and starts writing the code.

 

[Westley Martínez]

As I understand it, "hacking" is about not doing the job "properly".
When trying to make something, a hacker will use the equivalent of duct
tape to hold things together.

A computer hacker doesn't write the requirements of the software or
draw Jackson Structured Programming diagrams, etc, but just thinks
about what's needed and starts writing the code.

That's a cowboy coder.