I looked through what he has written so far and it seems to be really nice. I might give it a try as I have no experience in Python (my only programming experience is writing simple Bash and PowerShell scripts). I do, however, wish he had made it available in HTML as well as PDF.
Zed Shaw is Writing A Book Teaching Beginner Python
111–114 of 114 posts
Re: Zed Shaw is Writing A Book Teaching Beginner Python
#112It would be really interesting to sit someone down who is fairly comfortable surfing the web, answering emails, using iphoto or microsoft word, but who has never had any experience programming before, and see where they trip up and where they are bored in working through this. I know a few people I might be able to talk into it. If I do, I'll report back.
If you do, take notes, and let me know every part they have a problem with. Usually there's some "magic word" or missing bit they didn't know, or that exercise is just total crap.
My brother agreed to try it once school is out in a couple weeks. I think he's a pretty good candidate: computer savvy and uses a mac, is interested in what I do but has never tried to learn it before. I'll definitely take notes and pass them along.
Re: Zed Shaw is Writing A Book Teaching Beginner Python
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
"but my money is that most programmers learn Python as their nth language, where n > 2." Off the top of my head, I know at least 3 Universities (near me in Canada: UBC, SFU, UofC) that have recently switched to Python as the first language taught/used in their CS programs. There is a real demand for intro Python books. And IMHO Python is a pretty good first language.
MIT recently switched from Scheme to Python for their intro class
Caltech, too.
Re: Zed Shaw is Writing A Book Teaching Beginner Python
#114i see some strange things in the truth tables. first, the left and right operands are ordered differently. on second glance, this smells like gray code, so only one operand changes to the next line. nevermind my reaction here. then, the NOT AND table contradicts what python evaluates the forms to.
uh, after revisiting the tables in the PDF, i understand the situation better.
the NAND and NOR tables don't follow the same evaluation scheme.
the NOR table is "(not A) or B", which is according to python's precedence rules without parentheses.
the NAND table is "not (A and B)", which matches the common definition of NAND.