On Friday, January 16, 2015 at 8:34:20 PM UTC+5:30, Chris Angelico wrote: > Scenario: You're introducing someone to Python for the first time. > S/he may have some previous programming experience, or may be new to > the whole idea of giving a computer instructions. You have a couple of > minutes to show off how awesome Python is. What do you do?
There is this story -- maybe apocryphal -- that the tendency to vote democratic or republican runs so deep it can be detected from genetic markers. Similar things apply to programming: Some people are drawn to a mathematical style; some are not Some people love cute little scripts; some are left cold Some love graphics; some dislike etc etc All corollary to: Some people can think like programmers; most cant [Who does the last quote? Steve Jobs?] So to start with, you need to 'fingerprint' (is that the word?) your subject. > > I was thinking along the lines of a simple demo in the REPL, showing > off some of Python's coolest features. But then I got stuck on the > specifics. What are Python's best coolnesses? What makes for a good > demo? The reason I find the REPL particularly cool for such demos [I am surprised that Marko doesn't] is that at least to some extent you can straddle some of the divides above. How about a little web-scrape with beautiful-soup? Followed by maybe a "throw the results into a csv-file and open in the local spreadsheet"? -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
