On Apr 1, 3:09 pm, Bruno Desthuilliers <bruno. [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > sprad a écrit : > > > > > I'm a high school computer teacher, and I'm starting a series of > > programming courses next year (disguised as "game development" classes > > to capture more interest). The first year will be a gentle > > introduction to programming, leading to two more years of advanced > > topics. > > > I was initially thinking about doing the first year in Flash/ > > ActionScript, and the later years in Java. My reasoning is that Flash > > has the advantage of giving a quick payoff to keep the students > > interested while I sneak in some OOP concepts through ActionScript. > > Once they've gotten a decent grounding there, they move on to Java for > > some more heavy-duty programming. > > > I've never used Python, but I keep hearing enough good stuff about it > > to make me curious. > > > So -- would Python be a good fit for these classes? > > IMHO, yes, definitively - except that it won't introduce concepts like > static typing and primitive types, since it's dynamically typed and 100% > object. OTHO, it'll let you introduce quite a lot of more advanced > topics (operator overloading, metaclasses, higher-order functions, > closures, partial application etc) that you're less likely to grasp > using Java. > > > Could it equal > > Java as the later heavy-duty language? > > If you mean "is it possible to use Python to write real-world, > non-trivial applications", then the answer is obviously yes. Python's > use range from Q&D admin script to full-blown web application server > including vector graphic GUI apps, scientific data analysis and plotting > and game developpment and/or scripting. > > > Does it have enough quickly- > > accessible sparklies to unseat Flash? > > Since you plan to lure poor schoolboys in by pretending to teach them > game programming, you may want to have a look at pygame: > > http://www.pygame.org/news.html > > > I want to believe. Evangelize away. > > "Then I saw Pygame, now I'm a believer".... !-)
There is also pyglet which is quite impressive and easy to use. André -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
