Engineering Track

[David MacQuigg]

Now that summer is here, it's time to get serious about some content
for the fall semester. I've started some pages for students of IC
design. See http://pykata.appspot.com/Pcells. Parameterized cells (P-
cells) are enormously important in the
IC design industry. Engineers spend years learning all the
intricacies, the proprietary languages (at least one from every
vendor), and dealing with thousands of "design rules".

The goal of my P-cell library is to introduce some fundamental
concepts to engineering students, and avoid the grungy details. What
I just realized is that these Python P-cells may be useful beyond
engineering, as examples of object-oriented programming. You don't
need to understand circuit design. Just think P-cells as a collection
of geometric shapes that need to be squeezed into a compact bundle,
while avoiding design-rule violations. Python is ideal for this.
What other language could
provide an example of nested classes that won't blow everyone away.

Feedback on these examples will be appreciated.

I'm hoping to spend most of my spare time on this, but I am prepared
to finish the web programming instead. If we can't find a lead
designer, and be confident of at least finishing the Teacher Report
page, I will get busy and learn Django.

I'm also counting on Richard and Michel, and maybe Andy to put
together the lessons on basic Python and some good math examples.
That way, I can tell my students which exercises to work before coming
to my lecture on P-cells.

-- Dave

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[Richard G]

Just to post an update here about my part in this. Although I have
several other projects this summer (who doesn't?), I am working on a
core set of problems for PyKata that will be organized into these
categories:

Strings
Lists
Math
Logic
Recursion
Simple

These will be used in a high school CS class that is an alternative to
APCS and uses Python. Several students are working with me on this by
giving feedback, looking for errors, and also rating the individual
problems in difficulty. We'll be filling in the "Simple" category
later, as we compare the difficulties of all the problems in all
categories and move some into that category.

I'm using several python texts (and other CS texts) for reference
during this process, working from the large picture to the small.
Unfortunately, this top-down approach means that the actual writing of
the problems will be the last thing we finish, so if anyone wants to
see details during the process, just let me know.

Thanks,
Richard

http://shs.stvrain.k12.co.us/computerscience.htm



On May 11, 11:42 am, David MacQuigg <macqu...@box67.com> wrote:

>.... I'm also counting on Richard and Michel, and maybe Andy to put
> together the lessons on basic Python and some good math examples.....

[David MacQuigg]

We'll make Richard's problems what you see when you go to the main
page, but don't forget, we have templates so any teacher can customize
this site to their liking.

Richard, I like your webpage. Quite an ambitious program for a small
department. Success in introducing Python here will serve as a great
example for high schools everywhere.