Python cheat sheet

If you are learning a programming language it's often useful to have a cheat sheet with a concise list of key information. You can find many on the Web for Python, but I think that the Python Refcard done by Michael Goerz is one of the best.

'It contains: variable types (numbers, sequences, sets, strings and regular expressions), basic syntax, object orientation and modules, exception handling, system interaction, input/output, standard library"

It is intended to be printed on one piece of paper (double sided) and is formatted for A4, but Adobe manages to shrink it to print on letter size paper and the source is available in ODT, if you want to fiddle with it.

We might consider creating one or more one-page cheat sheets for use in CMSC 201 next Fall.

Club ShowMeDo videos on learning Python

Club Showmedo videos on learning Python

The showMeDo site has a series of short screencast videos on learning Python. Access to most of these required a $60/year subscription fee, however.

"Are you learning Python? To keep the site running clean and ad-free we've started Club ShowMeDo. The club will allow you access to some special videos we're making to pass on programming skills we consider important to the development and enjoyment of Free Open Source Software (FOSS).

The focus at the moment is on developing with the Python programming language, one of the backbones of the FOSS movement with a huge number of included and third-party libraries."

I'm not sure how effective these screencasts are, but we might experiment with the idea for teaching cmsc201. Screen casts with narration are easy to do and could be a good way to augment lectures. We could have the instructors and TAs produce some and might accumulate a good collection over the years. These could be shared with colleagues at other Universities.

Crunchy frog python tutorials

Crunchy is a Python system that "formats and delivers html-written Python tutorials inside a browser window, adding interactive elements and snazzy navigation." The name, crunchy, is a Monty Python reference.

Once you have downloaded and installed crunchy on your local computer, you can view HTML pages that have special crunchy-tags that will interact with crunchy and Python. One of the most useful features is that you can embed a Python interpreter window in your HTML presentation. If you are using this as an instructor, you can immediately demonstrate Python concepts from your browser. If you are a student, you can do this and then explore variations on your own.

Security is one potential issue with crunchy. Since an HTML file can invoke python from the browser, you need to trust its source. The authors have clearly thought about this and put in place various mechanisms to help. But, AFAIK, Python does not have a "sandbox" mechanism like Java's, so some risk remains.

If we want to use crunchy for teaching and have students install crunchy on their own computers, we'll have to look carefully at the security issues to ensure we understand and minimize the risk.

If you want to learn more about crunchy, the best way is to install it and view the crunchy tutorial that comes with it.

Guido van Robot

Guido the Robot is a simulator designed to teach people the rudiments of programming in Python. It's based on the earlier Karel the Robot. It's probably too simple for CMSC201, but might be useful for an initial exercise of perhaps for CMSC100 or CMSC104. Students write simple programs in a subset of Python to control a robot as it moves around in a city consisting of a rectangular grid of streets (left-right) and avenues (up-down). The system is open sourced, available on sourceforge and still being developed.

What is this blog?

This public blog is for the Spring 2009 UMBC Computer Science class CMSC 691p, Special Topics: Teaching Computer Science in Python. The instructors and students will use it to share information, ideas, and comments as well as to carry on discussions. Visitors are welcome to participate by adding comments to the posts.