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List:       kde-edu
Subject:    Re: [kde-edu]: proposal
From:       Sean McGlynn <sean () tmiau ! com>
Date:       2002-06-11 4:54:46
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On Saturday 08 June 2002 15:26, Dirk wrote:
> Hi,
>
> what do you think about an educational program to teach c++ or kde
> programming for beginners? This could be interesting for pupils at the age
> of 13 to 18 and perhaps could help kde to get new developers ;-)
>
> Best regards,
>
> Dirk
Hello All,

I'll just add to all the other replies. I might humbly suggest that python 
would be a good language to use for teaching beginners programming. I might 
also add that there is little point in arguing about 'which' language to 
choose; whoever writes the docs/code gets to choose, but there's no reason to 
limit the project (if it emerges) to a single language.

I suggest python (as a starting point) because of the enormous amount of 
existing documentation and number of tutorials available (for all ages and 
levels of knowledge and in many different spoken languages); because it is 
relatively simple to learn and is multi-paradigm (i.e. it can be used to 
introduce structured programming, OOP etc.); because it is a language that is 
a modern language used for "real" development and not just for education (so 
you can use it in the workplace when you get older :-); because it is 
interpreted, so no need to teach or worry about compilers etc. to begin with; 
because the OOP side of python will help those who want to move onto C++ do 
so more easily; because there is an existing 'Python in Education' Special 
Interest Group, supported by the languages creator himself; and because it 
has up to date bindings for both Qt and KDE, and can therefore be used to 
create working KDE GUI apps (something we all want to encourage, right!?).

Some URLs to look at:

The main python site itself
http://www.python.org

The standard documentation and numerous tutorial links
http://www.python.org/doc/

The 'Python in Education' Special Interest Group
http://www.python.org/sigs/edu-sig/

The short, sweet and well regarded 'Instant Hacking' and 'Instant Python' 
tutorials; just right for total newbies
http://www.hetland.org/python/

The online version of the book 'GUI Programming with Python: QT Edition'
http://www.opendocspublishing.com/pyqt/

The online (and downloadable) version of the book
'How to Think Like a Computer Scientist - Learning with Python'
http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy/

The online (and downloadable) version of the book
http://diveintopython.org/
(more advanced and, as yet, unfinished)

The online book 'Learning to Program'
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld/

The site for PyQt and PyKDE bindings
http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/

More and more :-)
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Programming/Languages/Python/FAQs,_Help,_and_Tutorials/

Just a suggestion. I'm off on holidays now for a couple of weeks, so excuse 
me if I don't reply to any replies :-)

Cheers,
Sean
-- 
Sean McGlynn
sean@tmiau.com
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