readme:james's blog

We're running a new course next academic year (05/06) - Creative Computing. It's all very exciting.

A big reshuffle has left us with a very good group of people to teach this. We're still preparing for the new year, and the content sounds like so much fun, I wish I was an undergraduate again.

I'll mostly be involved in the programming. We're moving away from Java for the introductory modules, which I think is a good thing. Instead, we'll be teaching Python.

I think Python is an ideal first language. You can start quickly, without having to gloss over too many concepts - compare the python "Hello World!" code:

print "Hello World!"

with the Java equivalent:

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

It's also nice that we can move towards objects, rather than have them in the way at the start. Not everyone thinks this is the best way around, but I don't see much merit to explaining what objects are before students have any idea why they're a good idea or what goes in them.

When we do get to objects, it's nice that we can start by explaining how everything in Python is an object already - basic types, even functions have methods.

With great libraries like Pygame, we can quickly move on to making things that are more interesting than the classic stock counting or customer details management examples.