On Feb 3, 7:54 am, "Alf P. Steinbach" <al...@start.no> wrote: > I've started on ch 3 of my beginner's intro to programming, now delving into > the > details of the Python language. > > It's just a few pages yet, file [03 asd.pdf] (no real title yet!) at > <url:http://tinyurl.com/programmingbookP3> which is at Google Docs. > > The first topic is about assertions and exceptions. I wonder whether this text > is easy or difficult to understand for a beginner. Or any improvements that > could be made. > > Cheers, > > - Alf
The only issue I have with what is there is the example - most programmers are not interested in solving mathematical equations and the code is enough to make the reader go cross-eyed. IMO the example code tends to detract from the point you are trying to make about using and how to use assertions. I would suggest a much simpler (to read) example than the one given. Ideally I would like to see more than one example with the examples graded from simple to more complex. A simple example could be just using the assert statement to verify pre-condition (assumptions) made on parameters to a function i.e. def divide (x, y): return x / y The programmer obviously assumed that y will never be 0 - so with one simple example you teach two points: 1. how an assert can be used 2. when programming look for unconscious assumptions Peter P.S. You also raise an interesting issue in my mind when quoting Knuth and siting TeX as an example application with no known bugs - Knuth advocated and used literate programming when writing TeX to achieve "clarity". I believe he (still?) cites the fact that TeX is so bug free because he used Literate Programming to write it (well, at least one reason). So should we be trying to teach literate programming to beginners? You did open that can of worms by quoting and siting Knuth and TeX... :-) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
