Adventures in junior programming, episode 2

Thank you, everyone, for all the great suggestions that you submitted to my previous post. As a result of all the recommendations, I decided to go ahead and teach myself Python. I'm sure Python enthusiasts will not be surprised to learn that I've found it... almost embarrassingly easy to work with. For instance, the Java program I listed:

class Hello {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println("Hello world");
}
}

And the Python equivalent:

print "Hello world"

Not even so much as a semicolon is required in this one, because Python actually enforces proper indentation and uses it to recognize code blocks. Since last week, I've checked out a book from the library and read much of the online tutorial, and implemented a simple object-oriented puzzle game that I used to assign to my C++ students. A special "Thank you" goes to Shawn, who volunteered to be my Python guru and code reviewer all week.

So the real question is, how would Ben take to it? I sought the answer to that question over some wings at Plucker's last night. (Before I get to the coding part, let it be known that Ben actually tried one of the hot ones, and pronounced it good. Then he stuck to the mild and drained two root beers.) We did some stuff before the food arrived, and after that we moved to a Starbucks inside a Barnes & Noble and got hot chocolate.

Python works pretty well as a first time language for a few reasons. It is an interpreted language, so you can run it line by line. To facilitate this, there is a command line interface. Type print "hello world" at the prompt and it gives immediate feedback. In fact, it's not even necessary to type "print", as the CLI will assume that if you type an expression without context, you want to see the value of that expression. Type 2+2 and the interpreter dutifully spits out 4. I got to work in some easy math lessons first by making him guess what the result was going to be as I typed various expressions.

After that I re-introduced him to variables. name = "Ben" is all you need to declare a string, and then you type name at the prompt and the interpreter returns 'Ben'. I pointed out the difference between typing name and "name", as one would print "Ben" and the other would print the string "name."

So next, input. By now we are getting to the point where the command line would just get in the way, so I start up a text file and type a two line program that says "Enter your name: "; you type something and then it says "Hello, [name]". Ben likes to try and confound the computer, so he banged out a long gibberish string, and then thought it was hilarious when the computer treated that as a name too. Lesson: computers aren't smart. They can only do what you tell them.

I demonstrated a simple "if" statement by writing a five line program where you are supposed to guess the secret number. (It was 17. No hints, just a magic number in the code. Maybe I'll work on the "higher"/"lower" binary search game next time.)

At this point, I explained, you know all the basic things that a computer program can do. Input, output, and logic. The rest is all variations on that from now on.

We did some more math, and then Ben said he wanted the computer to print the number googol. He was starting to type in all those zeroes, when I said "Wait! Don't count the zeroes!" Then I got to make a "for" loop, which starts with the number one and multiplies it by ten a hundred times.

That managed to impress him, but he was surprised that a hundred zeroes didn't take up more screen space. I said "Ah, but here's the great thing! Instead of 100 zeroes, can you change one thing in the program to make it a thousand?" After some thinking, he got it.

But then he insisted on upping the number to a million zeroes, which didn't work so well. The loop's too long, the computer got stuck calculating the number in the loop and didn't print anything. Lesson: computers are fast, but they don't have infinite speed. You have to write your programs in order to avoid making them get stuck.

I then showed how we would modify the loop to just print sequential numbers on each iteration. I was going to show how the computer can write progressive doubles, but at that point my laptop's battery ran out and we couldn't find a free plug in the entire bookstore, so we browsed some books and called it a night. Total time on programming was a bit less than two hours.

Ben's into it. We'll see how it goes next time I get a chance at him.