New Zealand (South Island)
Seth Kenlon is a UNIX geek, free culture advocate, independent multimedia artist, and D&D nerd. He has worked in the film and computing industry, often at the same time. He is one of the maintainers of the Slackware-based multimedia production project Slackermedia.
Authored Comments
It's great to get insight into the specifics of the language. Thank you.
My argument for how I structure these lessons, however, is that things like "while Main:" are "more correct" than "while Main is True:" or "== True" or whatever, it's more difficult to teach up front. Teaching a programming language means hitting readers and students with *a lot* of information, and the more often that information is consistent, the better.
In my experience (gained from about 5 years of teaching coding to students ranging from 11 to 64), it's confusing to teach someone how to compare values, and then to tell them that oh, by the way, making no comparison is the same as a Boolean comparison.
It's not a concept that's beyond any student, but early on in the training, in my very humble opinion, is not the time to adhere to super-optimisation or style standards.
There's a valid counter argument that teaching the most adherent method from the start is best. However, in my real-world experience, it detracts from the lesson and in fact confuses what you're trying to teach.
I have lots of controversial thoughts on education. I should write a series of articles, some day.
With all of that said, sorry for making your eyes bleed. :-) I do feel your pain, honest.
Hey, thanks. I'll get that fixed. Cheers!