Download NCLab's Free Programming Textbook!

[Pavel Solin]

The textbook "First Course in Programming with Karel the Robot and Python" 

written by P. Solin and S. Dede (http://femhub.com/docs/karel_en.pdf) is provided 

as a courtesy to all NCLab users. 

Karel the Robot is a legendary educational programming language that was created 

at the Stanford University. Nowadays it is being used in many countries around the 

globe to introduce students to computer programming. The robot knows just a handful 

of simple commands that are easy to learn, so students do not struggle with technicalities 

and focus on learning essential programming skills and good programming habits. 

Python is a modern high-level scientific programming language that is used widely in 

business, science, and engineering applications. Python is a high-level interpreted 

language, featuring simple and intuitive syntax, it is much easier to learn than conventional 

languages such as C, C++ or Java. It comes with powerful scientific libraries that make 

it easy for students to explore Computational Science and Engineering (CSE).

Do not forget to check out Level 3 in Karel, it is awesome. Karel has a GPS device, 

can use variables, make random moves, functions can return values, and more. In the 

exercises shown in the attachment, Karel is traversing recursively random binary trees. 

He has trees of gems, but the algorithms are exactly identical to "real" binary tree 

parsing algorithms. The textbook describes everything in great detail. 

Pavel

--
Pavel Solin
University of Nevada, Reno
http://hpfem.org/~pavel