demented Python...
Locked
 
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In calling something "demented" I'm coming off the namespace used around genres of cartoon. Cartoons I'd consider demented: Pinky and the Brain
Ren and Stimpy Teenage Aqua Hunger Force (Kevin Altis of PythonCard a fan) SpongeBob SquarePants ... (see clips on Youtube for any/all) Synonyms for demented: zany, surreal Relevant: links to "grossology" in EuroPython presentation: (see string.Template Mad Libs) Likewise, Demented Python serves a didactic function, here to remind about the decorator: def sillystrip( f ):
if f.__doc__: f.__doc__ = "Your function has been hacked!" else: f.__doc__ = "You should always have a docstring." return f @sillystrip def square( x ): """could also be a triangle""" return x * x def _test(): frank = 2
joe = square (frank) # frank is kinda square print("Hello Joe, Frank here.") print(square.__doc__) if __name__ == "__main__":
_test() Usage: >>> ================================ RESTART ================================ >>> Hello Joe, Frank here.
Your function has been hacked! Then comment out the docstring in the def of square. >>> ================================ RESTART ================================
>>> Hello Joe, Frank here. You should always have a docstring. _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [hidden email] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig |
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On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 11:16 AM, kirby urner <[hidden email]> wrote:
Oops:
PythonCard: a first (and brilliant) attempt to make cross-platform GUI programming easy with wxPython, Robin Dunn's wrapping of wxWidgets (earlier named wxWindows).
and let's not forget an all time favorite:
Duckman (too offensive for some on Diversity I'd warrant) Kirby on a Saturday Morning (a customary time for such streaming) Relevant: Mad Magazine, Crumb...
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In reply to this post by kirby urner-4
On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 14:16, kirby urner <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > In calling something "demented" I'm coming off > the namespace used around genres of cartoon. > Cartoons I'd consider demented: > Pinky and the Brain and their hosts, the Animaniacs > Ren and Stimpy > Teenage Aqua Hunger Force (Kevin Altis of PythonCard a fan) Aqua Teen Hunger Force (Number 1 in the hood, man) > SpongeBob SquarePants > ... Spaceghost Coast-to-Coast Sealab 2021 Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law Invader Zim South Park The Simpsons Futurama Family Guy Huri-kuri Suupaa Miruku Chan (Super Milk Chan) Bobobo-bo-bobobo Urusai Yatsura and, as you say, ..., in a tradition going back to Aristophanes, and to distant prehistory. Saw a flea Kick a tree, Fubba-wubba Fubba-wubba. Saw a flea kick a tree, Fubba-wubba John. Saw a flea Kick a tree In the middle of the sea, Singin' Old Blind Drunk John, Fubba-wubba John. > (see clips on Youtube for any/all) > Synonyms for demented: zany, surreal > Relevant: links to "grossology" in EuroPython > presentation: > http://www.4dsolutions.net/presentations/connectingthedots.pdf > (see string.Template Mad Libs) > Likewise, Demented Python serves a didactic function, > here to remind about the decorator: > def sillystrip( f ): > if f.__doc__: > f.__doc__ = "Your function has been hacked!" > else: > f.__doc__ = "You should always have a docstring." > return f > @sillystrip > def square( x ): > """could also be a triangle""" > return x * x > def _test(): > frank = 2 > joe = square (frank) # frank is kinda square > print("Hello Joe, Frank here.") > print(square.__doc__) > > if __name__ == "__main__": > _test() > > Usage: >>>> ================================ RESTART >>>> ================================ >>>> > Hello Joe, Frank here. > Your function has been hacked! > Then comment out the docstring in the def of square. >>>> ================================ RESTART >>>> ================================ >>>> > Hello Joe, Frank here. > You should always have a docstring. Defensive programming: <Pseudocode> Case: True:... Case: False:... Else: Print("This can't happen.") </> > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > [hidden email] > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig -- Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://www.earthtreasury.org/ _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [hidden email] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig |
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In reply to this post by kirby urner-4
On 04/02/2011 02:16 PM, kirby urner wrote:
> Likewise, Demented Python serves a didactic function, > here to remind about the decorator: > > def sillystrip( f ): > if f.__doc__: > f.__doc__ = "Your function has been hacked!" > else: > f.__doc__ = "You should always have a docstring." > return f > > @sillystrip > def square( x ): > """could also be a triangle""" > return x * x > > def _test(): > frank = 2 > joe = square (frank) # frank is kinda square > print("Hello Joe, Frank here.") > print(square.__doc__) > > if __name__ == "__main__": > _test() Did you see the PyCon2011 video on obfuscating python? http://blip.tv/file/4881220 -- Corey Richardson _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [hidden email] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig |
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In reply to this post by Mokurai
Team America: World Police (by South Park Studios -- quite demented) The Simpsons American Dad also a favorite Huri-kuri And a way of teaching that helps some people (more than others maybe) in part because of the resonance with very youthful experience (relearning about body fluids,
"grossology"), and in part because of the hard-to-forget imagery (Hieronymus Bosch is also somewhat demented). 'The Art of Memory' by Francis Yates and related tomes
draws many links between mnemonics and making an impression through the arts. This hermetic tradition has fed into memetics and advertising (PR, propaganda), as well as spatial data management GUIs.
I'd say we're at the other end of the spectrum from a lot of engineering pedagogy however, which seeks the least offensive, abstract, diagrammatic and/or neutral
tones. The hallmark of a Springer-Verlag publication is to be scrubbed clean of anything too quirky. My paradigm Snake class, with its eat and poop methods, is already too scatological for "serious adult" learning
according to many publishing codes. A workaround (sometimes) when working with adults in a workshop setting, is to say "this is what tends to work with younger kids" (not a lie), at which point they
give themselves more permission to get into it, from the safe distance of using curriculum materials intended for a different audience, not for them. I've seen my use of Madlibs as a way of doing string
substitution spread to other campuses. String substitution is the basis of templating, such as when outputting web pages or other "driver" codes such as scene description language (POV-Ray) or VRML / x3d (still under utilized
in high schools, thanks to the absence of a real digital math track). Behind the scenes, you may look at the megatrend of "biological computation" becoming respectable talk in
complexity science (dynamical systems, chaos, Santa Fe Institute) which is rather well established here in Portland as well, through Portland State's "systems" degree program.
When ant hills, immune systems, reproducing animals, are identified as "computational" in nature, you start to get more of a cross (hybrid) between metallic science
(metallurgy, silicon) and what we might call "slime" (collagen). The feng shui or alchemy among the disciplines is always shifting. It's what's happening in medical science more generally, with
more prosthetics and implants, more combinations of biological and synthetic / electronic. A movie that deliberately mixes computer and biological aspects of life (playing up the "grossology") is the (quite demented)
'eXistenZ'. I kept remarking on that film in a recent staff meeting. It wouldn't surprise me if the computer curriculum drifted more into this life sciences vein in part because of the accessibility of
CA (cellular automata) to beginners, starting with the Game of Life (of course) and Wolfram's NKS type algorithms (easy to implement and get somewhat grandiose about, but in academically respectable ways).
The popularity of the 'Sims' genre is another draw. Each Sim is an object, yet there are clear templates (classes) involved. 'Spore' is another one. Genetic algorithms, agent-based search
strategies... lots of concurrency and parallelism. I feel I have a somewhat front row seat on these issues given I'm tutoring someone in the PSU systems department in Python,
work for an outfit connected to Wolfram's, and have a history with this "demented cartoons" as pedagogical meme (traces to Mad Magazine and underground comics, not just TV of
course). Portland is a center for this kind of animation as well (at least culturally). Bill Plympton is from around here, as is Matt Groening. Here's some typical "chaos Python" with overt ties to PSU's curriculum, where Melanie is currently on faculty:
I've also sought to make the "cartoony" aspects of Python come more alive in the "person" of the PSF snake, a stuffed animal totem. She is developing a character and a history.
She's a somewhat rough, street wise, earthy, good natured old girl, who may not always know who the father is (true in the case of Adonis at least, probably that python in
Florida, although he looks a lot like a cobra...) Kirby
I actually see quite a bit of this design pattern in beginning programs: if a < b: elif a > b: elif a == b: else: -- though it's often a try/except that might be more realistic, e.g. complex numbers don't have ordering, just equality, making them more nominal
than ordinal in some ways (though subsets may be ordered, and | c | will define equivalence classes. > _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [hidden email] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig |
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In reply to this post by Corey Richardson
On Sun, Apr 3, 2011 at 2:39 AM, Corey Richardson <[hidden email]> wrote:
Just checked this out, thanks for the pointer. One of the most zany aspects was he's introduced as Rev. (Reverend) yet makes no reference to this in his
biographical remarks, nor does anyone bring it up in the Q&A out of curiosity -- just not that curious I guess, or everyone already knows (Subgenius?), or no one really cares (Pycons are notoriously accepting of
Diversity -- you could probably give a talk naked and no one would raise an eyebrow). I draw a vertical and horizontal axis and label these "lore" and "technical stuff" respectively, then draw a
curve representing the event horizon or standard bandwidth of the listener / learner (attender). This talk (Obfuscated Python) was super-duper to the technical end with hints at lore, such as when he talks about other languages and Curry Haskell in particular (Turing Machine etc.).
One hallmark of a super technical talk is you want to rewind and stare at the code. Everything seems to go by too quickly. You focus and concentrate on the technical aspects to the exclusion of all else, which
comes across as a distraction (unwanted noise). When you boost the lore component, you get more storytelling and it's more like those trade books for adults that purport to explain math and/or physics but contain
nary an equation, or just a few to help boost the self esteem (self confidence) of the reader. On the other hand, other types of artistry may be on display, such as foreshadowing, character development,
plot twists of various kinds, tone and texture (look and feel). The humanities have their liberal arts and crafts. It's not like optimizing bandwidth is a new challenge or that symbols became powerful only in our lifetimes.
Once you try to capture this stuff (hermeneutics) and teach it, you get into semantic networks, ontologies, diagrams every bit as technical... (film and theater production are not devoid
of technical tips and tricks, or lets talk about advertising) so there's a kind of Mobius strip at work (the art of Paul Laffoley comes to mind, for me, at this juncture, as both technical and lore-filled).
Take Sesame Street as another good example. There's really not much stress understanding the Letter A in the first place, once you've memorized your alphabet, the presumed technical
content of a Sesame Street short is far from overwhelming. It's designed for stay-at-home guardians as well, who need to vacuum, putter about the house, while Big Bird holds forth. Imagine absorbing computer science concepts, along with more of STEM, from similar video clips. Youtube already offers plenty of opportunities. And yet the lore takes up plenty of bandwidth and leaves
most viewers more satisfied than bored. The whole point of television is to make "day dreaming" (so necessary when chalkboards and droning pedants are involved) quasi-unnecessary. The tube replaces your dreams
with its own. Of course that may serve insidious and/or subversive ends (a nation of zombies), but this doesn't detract from my point. (the "cult of cute" in Japanese animation -- scatological) Upshot: Python andragogy and pedagogy will develop along different lineages. I'm pioneering zaniness as a
useful component, which takes me in the direction of certain kinds of animation we might see on Python.tv someday. Vi Hart's stuff is somewhat zany, but not over the top.
Mathematicians have long ties to the surreal, Alice in Wonderland being the work of a logician. OLPC gets somewhat zany in places, without paying too high a price. It's a fine line.
A tinge of darkness for happy camper campfire stories:
Towards the higher end, those on the PSF list know I like
to rope in Greek mythology and play up the Python's importance to Athena's cult (also Nike's: "Just Use It"). I'm roughly following what's known as the Parthenon Code
among conspiracy theorists, which piggy-backs on the better known Da Vinci Code in terms of gaining name recognition and notoriety. Kirby -- _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [hidden email] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig |
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