Python in Education

Obvious Simplicity

The simple core concepts and knowledge required to write Python

code will get you quite far. That they are easy to learn, use and

remember is another characteristic in Python’s favor. Furthermore,

Python is an obvious programming language—it tries to do the

expected thing and will complain if you, the programmer, attempt to

do something clearly wrong. It’s also obvious in a second sense—it

names various concepts using commonly understood English

words.

Consider the following two examples.

In some languages, if you want to create a list of things, you have to

use variously named constructs such as arrays, arraylists, vectors

and collections. In Python, you use something called a list. Here’s

my to-do list from earlier written in Python:

todo_list = ['Shopping', 'Fix broken gutter', 'Mow the lawn']

This code assigns a list of values (strings of characters containing

words that describe tasks in my to-do list) to an object named

todo_list

 (which I can reuse later to refer to this specific list of

items).

In some languages, if you want to create a data dictionary that

allows you to store and look up named values (a basic key/value