Saturday, May 10, 2008

SA: Classnotes 2008.5.10

I took Tri-Met today, which got me there with minutes to spare. It's quite a hike from where 14 leaves me, to Cramer in PSU, but Portland is a smallish town, and I wasn't lugging speakers, nor even a laptop this time.

Our main focus today was a somewhat exhaustive investigation into a simple game framework I put together since last week, after gauging student interests and abilities.

The emphasis here is on building a reading familiarity with core Python such that slower paced tutorials will already come with some context.

We visited Showmedo and watched some of Jeff Rush's Intro to IPython, also Dive Into Python, and of course the Python docs themselves, to prepare them for self-study at whatever rate.

I also continued underlining the fact that Python comes in several flavors, including a proprietary version atop Nokia hardware or whatever, all in accordance with its liberal license.

IronPython and Jython implement the language in C# and Java respectively. Stay tuned for more options.

I also explained how I use Python in my own case professionally, sometimes to study the geometry of geodesics, per stickworks.py and polyhedra.py -- my 4dsolutions.net stuff will remain at their disposal, as adventures continue.