Invent with Python

Al Sweigart gave a presentation of his book, Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python, to Baypiggies tonight. His book is aimed at kids that are interested in learning how to program. He said he didn't have a particular age range in mind, but I would say from experience it would probably be fine for anyone age 8 to 15 with an interest in computers.

I was impressed with the overall tone and layout of his book. And his choice of teaching programming via writing simple computer games is right on the money. He mentioned that what got him hooked on programming was tinkering around creating simple games when he was kid; I'd venture that was what got a great many of the best engineers I've met started. In addition, he choose to teach programming concepts via Python, which I also agree is a great language for learning because it is expressive, easy to understand, and yet powerful to build professional applications.

In his presentation, Al accurately pointed out that there is a trend to try and simplify programming for kids until it resembles building with duplo blocks and that really isn't helpful for kids nor interesting for them. I concur enthusiastically. Projects like Scratch are neat, but seem patronizing to me. I learned on BASIC and Pascal and I don't doubt kids today are just as capable. That said, BASIC and Pascal are dated now; python is just as easy to learn yet more powerful and modern so it is a great choice.

Another difference between Al's book and many intro books is that his programs are short, fun, and mostly text. Of course, every kid dreams of writing graphical games like the video games they play but that is, frankly, not realistic. Again, Al doesn't lie to his audience; he presents fun text-based games that kids can tinker with. He starts with a simple guessing game, then hangman, tic-tac-toe, and othello. Towards the end of the book, he does introduce pygame and shows how to use it to make simple graphical games, but the vast majority of the book focuses on teaching fundamental concepts via text-based games.

I actually taught introductory computer programming to high school students, age 14 and 15, a number of years ago. Back then we used C, but I was surprised to find that Al presents software concepts in the same order I did and even uses the same games to drive those concepts home. If I could teach the same class today in python, Al Sweigart's Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python is the book I'd want to use.

Overall I was quite impressed with the great job Al did with the book and appreciate him taking the time to talk about it, and the process of writing it, to us at Baypiggies tonight.

P.S. I should mention that he has published the book under the Creative Commons license so it is free to read; you can even download the latest edition off his website. Amazon sells it in dead-tree format too, but you should hold off because the second edition will be going to print soon.