At Pycon India Day 1, "National Mission on Education through ICT & Python" was a great talk, and mission is seriously something which is the need of the hour. What I like best about the mission is, engineering students would actually be _utilizing_ computers to do a whole variety of tasks which Python makes as easy as pie, by attaching wings to our imaginations rather than restricting it by [ language specific rules, conventions, the need to understand things at core level ] The impact, sooner or later is going to be huge. As one of the people already questioned about schools, and it was announced that this initiative aims just colleges - engineering and sciences. I would like to ask, are there any parallel initiatives which aim at schools? I wish there are some... one aspect of Python which I appreciate most is - There is very less time between imagination and implementation for short programs. Secondly, being an interpreter, you can always execute on the fly and you can always make live mistakes and know what went wrong. There is inbuilt help as we saw it. What could be more perfect to begin programming. I've heard about how kids in European countries begin with Python. Let's compare that to India, I started with GW-BASIC, which is a very good language to begin with. But don't you think it has become pretty old, and is hardly readily available. People start with LOGO at some places, but that limits them to drawing, though it does introduce one to joy of programming. I don't think teaching C++ actually gets a normal kid excited about programming, rather than that, just like some of us developed maths phobia back then, some kids end up hating the word 'programming'. I've heard that many times from my peers at college. Python is something that can convince them more about the power of programming than C/C++ for sure. And instead of people developing a sort of resistance to programming, can actually appreciate how it actually gives them freedom over huge software suits and tools and instead get their work done the way they want, with outputs in format they want, without having to pay a penny as in case of Python. It happens that at ICSE schools java/c++ is offered for almost last 4 years of schooling, while my CBSE experience was horrible, with no programming in syllabus till class 11th. While way back in an ICSE school, programming started at class 6 with GW-BASIC and that language was fun. My whole point is, wherever programming is taught at school levels, I think Python must replace old almost dying pieces of GWBASIC/QuickBASIC or TurboC++. People usually tend to leave both BASIC, and TurboC++ when they don't realize, the ones who don't end up as teachers at colleges like mine. But had we a generation that knew basics of Python, things would've been different. For whome a TurboC++ IDE became something they depend on, like chain smokers depend on cigarettes, Python would've been a Jetpack they would've never forgotten. What I mean is that learning Python at school won't make Python vanish from your life after you leave school since you can possibly do anything with it.
Anyways, So is MHRD/(Whoever cares) doing something at School Level? Wouldn't that solve the demand of Python teachers as needed by "National Mission on Education through ICT & Python" and actually reduce the friction to its adoptibility which I can obviously see at engineering level, I'm sure not many of the profs/teachers at my college would put efforts to try out Python. Regards, Abhishek Mishra out for Day 2 :) _______________________________________________ BangPypers mailing list BangPypers@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/bangpypers
