3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children

Newsgroups	comp.lang.python
Date	2014-08-01 23:45 -0700
Message-ID	<7ef67ccc-3fc3-47dd-b858-09ef3b57a497@googlegroups.com> (permalink)
Subject	3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children
From	Mark Summerfield <list@qtrac.plus.com>

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Last week I spent a couple of days teaching two children (10 and 13 -- too big an age gap!) how to do some turtle graphics with Python. Neither had programmed Python before -- one is a Minecraft ace and the other had done Scratch.

Suggestion #1: Make IDLE start in the user's home directory.

Suggestion #2: Make all the turtle examples begin "from turtle import *" so no leading turtle. is needed in the examples.

Suggestion #3: Make object(key=value, ...) legal and equiv of types.SimpleNamespace(key=value, ...).

Explanation & Rationale (long):

They both had Windows laptops and so we began by installing Python. They didn't know if they had 32- or 64-bit computers but it didn't matter, the installs just worked. One child had no problem but the other ended up on the Download page which lists all the possible Windows downloads; so we had to go back and start again.

We discovered that IDLE's working directory is C:\Python34 -- surely this is the wrong working directory for 99% of normal users and for 100% of beginners? Naturally they saved all their .py files there until I realised. And then when I got them to create a new directory for their own files ("Python" and "pie_thon") and dragged them across they also managed to move python.exe and pythonw.exe.

Couldn't IDLE start in the home directory?

The turtle package is quite nice and there is a very short but dramatic colored star example at the start of the docs. There really ought to be a little gallery of similar examples, including circle, polygon, and star (yes I know circle and polygon are built in but it is nice for children to see a simple implementation), and of course a few more -- but not any that compose shapes (e.g., face and house), since one would want them to learn how to compose themselves.

Making them type turtle.this and turtle.that would be torture, so we began every file with

from turtle import *

I wish the doc examples did the same. (For randint we did from random import randint since only the one function was needed.)

I stuck to pure procedural programming since OO would have been too much cognitive load to add given the time. I did make sure that once they'd created something (e.g., a face), they then put it inside a function.

However, when it came to making a game ("hit the hippo") we needed to maintain some state that several functions could access. (I had to gloss over that we were doing higher order programming! -- e.g. onscreenclick(goto) etc.) What I wanted to write was this:

state = object(moving=True, score=0) # Illegal!
...
state.moving = False # etc.

But was forced to do this:

state = {'moving': True, 'score': 0}
...
state['moving'] = False # so they get confused between {} and []

There is an alternative:

from types import SimpleNamespace

state = SimpleNamespace(moving=True, score=0)
...
state.moving = False # etc.

But I felt that explaining what a namespace was would be too much -- remember they're having problems remembering to put () at the end of function calls etc.
It would be nicer if object() acted as it does now but object(key=value,...) behaved like types.SimpleNamespace.

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3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children Mark Summerfield <list@qtrac.plus.com> - 2014-08-01 23:45 -0700
  Re: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-08-02 10:14 +0300
    Re: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children Mark Summerfield <list@qtrac.plus.com> - 2014-08-02 00:38 -0700
      Re: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-08-02 11:03 +0300
        Re: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-08-03 02:00 +1000
          Re: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-08-02 20:07 +0300
            Re: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2014-08-02 18:29 +0100
              Re: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-08-02 21:33 +0300
    Re: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-08-03 01:43 +1000
      Correct type for a simple “bag of attributes” namespace object (was: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children) Ben Finney <ben+python@benfinney.id.au> - 2014-08-03 05:58 +1000
        Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object (was: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children) Mark Summerfield <list@qtrac.plus.com> - 2014-08-02 13:46 -0700
          Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object (was: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children) Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-08-03 07:05 +1000
          Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2014-08-02 22:16 +0100
          Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-08-03 07:24 +1000
          Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2014-08-02 22:23 +0100
          Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object (was: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children) Devin Jeanpierre <jeanpierreda@gmail.com> - 2014-08-02 16:18 -0700
          Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object (was: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children) Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-08-03 09:27 +1000
          Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object (was: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children) Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com> - 2014-08-02 18:59 -0600
          Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-08-02 22:40 -0400
          Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-08-02 22:43 -0400
          Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object Albert-Jan Roskam <fomcl@yahoo.com> - 2014-08-03 02:17 -0700
          Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object Peter Otten <__peter__@web.de> - 2014-08-03 11:37 +0200
          Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object Albert-Jan Roskam <fomcl@yahoo.com> - 2014-08-03 03:51 -0700
          Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object Albert-Jan Roskam <fomcl@yahoo.com> - 2014-08-03 04:14 -0700
          Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object Peter Otten <__peter__@web.de> - 2014-08-03 13:23 +0200
            Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-08-03 17:51 +0300
              Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2014-08-03 11:09 -0400
                Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-08-03 18:52 +0300
              Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-08-03 18:55 -0400
                Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-08-04 11:19 +1000
                Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-08-04 01:26 -0400
              Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-08-04 10:13 +1000
                Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2014-08-03 20:59 -0400
                Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object Gregory Ewing <greg.ewing@canterbury.ac.nz> - 2014-08-04 13:00 +1200
                Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-08-04 08:41 +0300
                Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com> - 2014-08-04 00:41 -0600
                Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-08-04 09:57 +0300
          Re: Correct type for a simple "bag of attributes" namespace object Akira Li <4kir4.1i@gmail.com> - 2014-08-03 18:22 +0400
      Re: Correct type for a simple “bag of attributes” namespace object Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2014-08-03 13:28 +0100
        Re: Correct type for a simple “bag of attributes” namespace object Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2014-08-03 08:40 -0400
          Re: Correct type for a simple “bag of attributes” namespace object Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-08-03 22:56 +1000
            Re: Correct type for a simple “bag of attributes” namespace object Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2014-08-03 09:25 -0400
              Re: Correct type for a simple “bag of attributes” namespace object Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-08-03 23:35 +1000
                Re: Correct type for a simple “bag of attributes” namespace object Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2014-08-03 10:36 -0400
                Re: Correct type for a simple “bag of attributes” namespace object Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-08-04 01:00 +1000
      Re: Correct type for a simple “bag of attributes” namespace object Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2014-08-03 18:38 +0100
        Re: Correct type for a simple “bag of attributes” namespace object Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2014-08-03 13:44 -0400
  Re: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2014-08-02 08:46 +0100
    Re: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children Mark Summerfield <list@qtrac.plus.com> - 2014-08-02 01:03 -0700
      Re: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-08-02 19:14 -0400
  Re: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-08-02 19:12 -0400
  Re: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children Brian Blais <bblais@gmail.com> - 2014-08-05 07:36 -0400
    Re: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-08-05 15:04 +0300
      Re: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children Skip Montanaro <skip@pobox.com> - 2014-08-05 07:31 -0500
        Re: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-08-05 16:19 +0300
          Re: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children MRAB <python@mrabarnett.plus.com> - 2014-08-05 15:11 +0100
          Re: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-08-06 02:14 +1000
      Re: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-08-05 22:43 +1000
        Re: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-08-05 23:08 +1000
      Re: 3 Suggestions to Make Python Easier For Children Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-08-05 23:00 +1000

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