[IAEP] Sugar Digest 2013-08-22

[Walter Bender]

On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 4:35 PM, James Simmons <nicestep at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Walter,
>
> Several points in your digest got my attention.  First, I like the Disreali
> quote.  I have just finished writing a novel and I learned more from doing
> that than from every literature class I ever took.  The funny thing is I had
> been assigned to write short stories in high school, but my teachers never
> told you how to go about it. I only learned the process from reading books
> by Jack Woodford (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Woodford).  I wish I had
> those books in high school. They explain everything. A lot of well known
> authors learned how to make stories and novels from those books, including
> Ray Bradbury.
>
> Second, I am also an admirer of Flavio Danesse.  He has a website in Spanish
> that is a great resource for a new Python programmer.  I agree that IDEs are
> probably something to avoid when learning to program, at least the more
> complex ones.  I learned C from Turbo C, which was not much more than an
> editor with a compiler that let you click on a compile error and be taken to
> the line in the editor that had the problem.  Something like that is
> worthwhile.  Eric is pretty much just that for Python, plus syntax
> highlighting.  If you mess up the indenting it will tell you.
>
> I have a niece at Thomas Jefferson High School that I tutored in Java
> programming.  Her books were written by her teachers and licensed using
> Creative Commons, but apparently they weren't published anywhere.  They
> didn't use IDEs either.  It was a tough class for some very bright kids.
>
> Finally, the whole Spirituality For Kids thing.  I suppose people have
> different ideas on what Spirituality is.  The website promotes astrology,
> which I find kind of dubious.  I got all my ideas about Spirituality from my
> wasted youth in the Hare Krishna movement, so I was hoping for something
> more like my own education.  In the first lesson you'd learn how "You're not
> that body!" and other lessons would include The Path Of Knowledge, The Path
> Of Action, The Path Of Devotion, and so on.  After the final lesson the
> child would be given a bag full of Bhagavad Gitas and sent to the nearest
> airport.
>
> James Simmons

Maybe I haven't looked carefully enough, but I didn't see anything
about astrology. Thought it was pretty much a humanist approach.

-walter

-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org