[Python-il] Looking for a little educational project for a Python newbie

[guy keren]

when i learned python, i went with what did it to me - ascii games. 
after preparing the very basic functions to draw a char on a given X,Y 
position - it was very easy to start writing a program that displays 
scrolling banners (actually, i used simple carriage-return tricks here), 
a jumping ball, hangman (using /usr/share/dict/linux.words for the 
words, having to do file I/O for the word choosing and for the 
high-score table), ping-pong, basketball and checkers (the last one 
included AI to play the machine's part - and required doing benchmarking 
of data structures, in order to make it possible for the machine to 
calculate more steps).

--guy

cool-RR wrote:
> Sounds okay. I was hoping for something with a more sexy result, but if 
> there are no other suggestions, I'll take it. Thanks.
> 
> On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 1:59 AM, Imri Goldberg <lorgandon at gmail.com 
> <mailto:lorgandon at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     My favorite first exercise for any language is "fnord". For Python
>     it's especially fun, because it's very easy to write.
>     The idea is simple:
>     construct sentences according to templates.
>     First version:
>     1. Given a list of verbs, nouns, adverbs and adjectives, construct
>     sentences of the form "The adjective noun adverb verb the adjective
>     adjective noun". (print them).
>     2. Read the lists of words from files
>     3. Also read a list of templates from a file.
> 
>     I consider this a very good first exercise for any language because:
>     1. The algorithm is pretty simple, so you mostly practice the
>     language itself.
>     2. For programming beginners, the algorithm is still very much
>     teaching them.
>     3. It covers a lot of the basic subjects: simple IO, file IO, string
>     processing, dictionaries, lists, "executable programs", etc..
>     4. It can be extended to teach basic testing using unittest and
>     coverage.py.
>     5. It can be extended to teach networking.
> 
>     Cheers,
>     Imri
> 
>     On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 10:22 PM, cool-RR <cool-rr at cool-rr.com
>     <mailto:cool-rr at cool-rr.com>> wrote:
> 
>         Come on, that's just geek crap.
> 
> 
>         On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 9:57 PM, Meir Kriheli <meir at mksoft.co.il
>         <mailto:meir at mksoft.co.il>> wrote:
> 
>             On 02/28/2010 09:20 PM, cool-RR wrote:
> 
>                 Hello,
> 
>                 I am guiding my friend in learning Python. He's a past
>                 programmer in
>                 other languages, so I gave him Dive into Python. But he
>                 tells me he has
>                 a problem: He needs more actual exercise for his Python
>                 skills. I gave
>                 him the Project Euler exercises, which are pretty fun,
>                 but they're all
>                 about algorithms and he feels he already has that part
>                 under control.
> 
>                 So I'm looking for a little educational project to give
>                 him to program.
>                 Not something of any practical use, it should just be
>                 something fun and
>                 cool that will let him use many different idioms of Python.
> 
>                 Does anyone have a suggestion?
> 
>                 --
>                 Sincerely,
>                 Ram Rachum
> 
> 
>             Try this:
>             http://www.pythonchallenge.com/
> 
>             Cheers
>             --
>             Meir
> 
> 
> 
> 
>         -- 
>         Sincerely,
>         Ram Rachum
> 
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> 
> 
> 
>     -- 
>     Imri Goldberg
>     --------------------------------------
>     http://plnnr.com/ - automatic trip planning
>     http://www.algorithm.co.il/blogs/
>     --------------------------------------
>     -- insert signature here ----
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Sincerely,
> Ram Rachum
> 
> 
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