Simon Willison’s Weblog

New Python Computer Science text book

13th December 2003

Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science is a new Computer Science text book designed for use in introduction to programming classes, written by John Zelle, who’s Teaching with Python page . Kirby Urner recently posted a mostly positive review of the book to the Python Edu-SIG mailing list, which sparked an interesting discussion about Python’s place in the CS curriculum.

Unsurprisingly, the one thing that isn’t disputed on the Python Edu-SIG list is that Python is a superb first language for CS students. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m convinced that the reason so many of my fellow students seem to actively dislike programming is that they’re introduction to it was via Java, a language that enforces a mentality of battling the compiler more than one of straight problem solving. Hopefully now that text books are beginning to appear Python will be considered more seriously by computer science departments around the world.