2006-07-23

### Teaching beginning programming with Python [![Icon-Permalink.png](/Icon-Permalink.png)](#)

[![python-new.png](/space/python-new.png)](/space/teaching+beginning+programming+with+Python)[![python-old.png](/space/python-old.png)](/space/teaching+beginning+programming+with+Python)

I'm a software engineer. I've been programming for a long time - in
[school](http://www.stanford.edu/), at [work](http://google.com/), and for
[fun](/space/software). While I was in school, I also taught computer science as
a TA for three years.

I TAed a [mid-level class](http://cs107.stanford.edu/), though, so by the time I
met the students, they didn't just know how to program, they'd also mastered
more in-depth concepts like pointers, recursion, computer architecture, and
algorithms.

Last Sunday, for the first time, I had the chance to teach someone to program
who'd never written a line of code before. It was very, very different from
TAing. It was also a _lot_ of fun.

[Read more...](/space/teaching beginning programming with Python)