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Online Python Tutor

people.csail.mit.edu

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Re: Online Python Tutor

#2

Post by thefool »

This is awesome.

Would be cool to see a version for a lower level language like C that would help people understand the stack and visualize pointer arithmetic.

Re: Online Python Tutor

#7

Post by ht_th »

Although I like these kind of tools, I doubt that they're useful to learn basic programming as they need a lot of prior knowledge to be present to already understand the visualization. For example, what is a stack or heap to a novice programmer? What will the effect of this visualization be on their construction of an operational understanding of basic programming language concepts? And these constructs, will they be helpful, have no effect, or even be detrimental for developing understanding of more complex programming structures?

On the other hand, in a more advanced course, say at university level, it might help to construct knowledge about how programming languages work internally and how this relates to their already existing understanding of basic programming constructs. So, as a teacher be sure to evaluate the effect of the educational tools you use. I know it is easy to use existing cool tools (and this one definitely belongs to that category), but what is its effect on your students' learning?

Re: Online Python Tutor

#8

Post by samdk »

ht_th wrote: post #7

Although I like these kind of tools, I doubt that they're useful to learn basic programming as they need a lot of prior knowledge to be present to already understand the visualization. For example, what is a stack or heap to a novice programmer? What will the effect of this visualization be on their construction of an operational understanding of basic programming language concepts? And these constructs, will they be…

Having been a teaching assistant for intro programming classes targeted at non-CS majors, I disagree. You don't need to understand what a 'stack' or 'heap' is to understand what's going on and for this to be useful.

And even if it's too complicated to be useful for people on their own, being able to use something like this as a teaching aid would be very helpful. The number of people who have trouble grasping even what most of us consider very basic concepts like iteration over a list is astonishing. Trying to explain something you find trivially easy to someone who doesn't understand it at all is an exercise in frustration for both people. I usually resorted to doing a manual step-through on a whiteboard or piece of paper, but this is much nicer.

I would discourage people from using this constantly, just because I think having a step-through debugger handy constantly will prevent you from developing necessary debugging skills. (The concept of wrapping something in print statements is another thing I take for granted that's not obvious to some people.) But I still don't see how something like this could be anything but a net positive.

Re: Online Python Tutor

#9

Post by bp_ »

The tool is awesome, but I wouldn't rely too much on the instruction bounds. For example, the greatest sums exercise (http://people.csail.mit.edu/pgbovine/python/question.html?op...) can be solved in six "steps" for all input lengths, while it's certainly no O(1) business.

  def maxPairSum(data):
    return sum(sorted(data)[-2:]) # one "step"
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