Python chapter changes

[mhasoba]

@fwimp , can you please review this chapter, specifically the new section of good programming practices?

[fwimp]

Introduction

• I'm a little confused here, this intro seems to imply that students will complete both Python weeks, but also the pull request implies that these two have been merged.

Why Python?

• It may be worthwhile pointing out here that in a lot of cases (ESPECIALLY IN THIS JULIA-PRODUCED GRAPH) you can actually make python run a lot faster than it seems here. You just need to code python in the way it should be written, not like you're writing a different language (as they sorta did here).

Python versions

• Is it true that most of the code will work in Python 2.7? I don't think so, can probably remove this.

Determining an object's type

• The gedit command here seems like a throwback to the original silbiocomp repo, why not use nano? Or just code?

Assigning and manipulating variables

• Again here, multi-line commands should be formatted in proper triple-backtick-fenced code blocks rather than individual cells.

Python data structures

• Table is missing headers
• Also weird italicisation in the first column

Lists

• Again with these multi-line commands in separate cells!

Sets

• You can also convert tuples to sets!

Dictionaries

• It may be worthwhile explicitly spelling out here that every dictionary key must be unique.

Copying mutable objects

• Double comma in first sentence.

Testing/Running blocks of code

• Weird star as a hangover from silbiocomp

Functions

• Some output here seems to be missing

Conditionals

• Erm... 0 is most certainly an integer!
• What we should be talking about is that the truthiness of an integer is dependent on its value, where anything other than 0 is cast to True, with 0 being False
• This is actually misleading so definitely needs to be changed.

Variable scope

• Spelling error: "seuccessive simmation" should be "successive summation"

Importance of the return directive

• "returning a None" note box is weirdly formatted.

Handling csv’s

• Weird stars throughout this as a remnant of silbiocomp

Writing Python programs

• Weird stars here too

The Docstring

• It may be worthwhile linking to a standard form for docstrings here, such as the google style.

Internal Variables

• Technically it's fine to define your own dunder variables, in fact it's sometimes a good thing to do (such as when defining versioning or especially when writing your own classes). It may be better to explain a bit more about what they do and why they're there.
• This is especially pertinent as in the "A program-with-control-flows example" section the example uses dunder variables in the first 7 lines...

What is sys.argv?

• It may be worthwhile pointing students towards argparse for this, as they definitely should know about it.

Errors that cannot be debugged

• Code in the tip box is not correctly formatted. Should use a triple backtick code fence.

[mhasoba]

Thanks for the very detailed review, @fwimp !

That's a long list of changes, so am going to deploy the book with some edits and then address these...

[fwimp]

Lots of suggestions, but most of them shouldn't require much thought to investigate :)