

Sal Khan has started videos about Python - paufernandez
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWufLwJkfoE

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hebejebelus
Interesting, very interesting. Now, I haven't watched any programming-specific
videos other than the one linked, but my immediate thoughts were something
along the lines of "But you need to know [that a program executes from the
top-down] first!" where [] is pretty much everything I know about programming.

But I think that I might be wrong. I think that Sal might be right, and just
go. Python is easy enough that some people might pick it up just from
following along - not to mention that you don't want to fill people's heads
with crazy words they've never heard before. That's only going to stop people
from trying to program.

The problem is that I'm a fairly experienced programmer by now, so any
thoughts I _do_ have are going to be skewed. I can't look at these videos from
a beginner's eyes because my mental model for programming is already set, and
no matter how I look at something, I'll try to fit it into my existing model.

Either way, this is fantastic. Absolutely excellent. I think it's wonderful.
Honestly cannot shut up about it. I'm going to tell my sister to watch them,
just to see what she thinks.

Given that Sal focuses an awful lot of time on getting Khan Academy in
schools, this may be the next step in teaching the entire world how to
program. I can't wait to see where this leads.

~~~
spicyj
I am going to try and take advantage of your comment's popularity and post a
link near the top of the page to the new video that seems to replace the one
that he took down:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyYp1V84Xqc>

Hopefully a mod can change the link.

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Locke1689
He's just straight up wrong about putting the filename in a comment at the top
of the file. It's true: files change names all the time, why make someone
change them in two places _every time_? Moreover, he should be describing the
module using PyDoc, not comments.

I'm worried: Sal does not seem like a professional software developer or
someone who's done significant software maintenance. Like Visual Basic, he
could end up just teaching bad practices that people who watch his videos will
just have to unlearn later.

Personally, I'm still going to recommend that people read Learn Python the
Hard Way, _not_ watch this video.

~~~
rubergly
When you teach basic math, do you start with introducing the student to proof
theory? In any field, the natural process is to relearn how to do things. I
certainly have had to change how I program, how I document, etc., and I think
I am a better programmer because of learning to adapt to those things when
I've found a better solution.

LPTHW looks like a great book and may be a much more thorough introduction to
Python for someone who is committed to learning the language; these videos are
not really focused on that demographic. LPTHW is great if you're already a
programmer or go in knowing you really want to learn how to program; hopefully
where these videos can succeed is bringing in new people who are mildly
interested and getting them started while showing them how fascinating
programming can be. One day, hopefully Khan Academy will have enough videos
and interactive exercises that a programming education will be as thorough as
LPTHW, but that doesn't happen overnight.

~~~
Locke1689
He's not simplifying things by putting the filename at the top of the file:
he's just wrong. This is stuff which is clearly learned because people who
don't know how to program correctly pass on little pieces of code like secret
incantations without really thinking about them.

I'm not saying that adding extraneous comments at the top of your file is the
end of the world: I'm saying that Sal violated _basic programming practice_ in
one of the simplest 10 line programs that can be written. This is a canary.

What makes good teachers so good is that they know their field so well that
they can use all of their gathered knowledge to help clarify and guide people
who don't know any better. It doesn't matter how good a teacher you are if you
really don't know what you're teaching.

~~~
statictype
Sorry, but this comes off as typical nerd-rage, nitpicking about things that
_don't matter_.

This video isn't trying to make people into professional developers any more
than his videos on algebra are trying to teach research-oriented mathematics.

~~~
Tiomaidh
He's not upset about the filename-comment _per se_ , he's worried that it's an
early warning--it indicates that Khan isn't very experienced with software
development (which, in my opinion, is a valid conclusion), and that that'll
cause more serious problems in the future.

~~~
wisty
Remember when people started slamming him for oversimplifying history, or
getting other minor facts wrong on non-programming subjects? Everyone on HN
just said "it's free, it's interesting, and who cares as long as students get
the basic idea?"

Now that he's making minor mistakes on programming, HNers are upset he's not a
software engineering expert.

~~~
mixmastamyk
I'm willing to cut the guy a break. ;) However now that donations (I assume)
are coming in, its probably about time to start consulting with experts before
starting a class.

~~~
Adam503
Willing to cut the guy a break, huh? How big of you.

Are you willing to actually do any work to improve it, or give a big cash
grant so KhanAcademy.org can hire those professional programmers to help out?

~~~
mixmastamyk
Woosh.

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edw
There was a recent essay taking Khan to task for what the essayist saw as
superficiality in Khan's coverage of world history. I am interested to see how
the Hacker News community assesses the quality of materials that are related
to subjects that are within the areas of expertise of many of us.

On a related note, what many people here found a helpful introduction to
Clojure was viewed with circumspection my some in the #clojure Freenode
community. Assessing the quality of materials is made even more difficult by
the challenge of finding the critics whose opinions are worth paying attention
to.

~~~
shii
This is a legitimate concern and I fear whenever I hear of people lauding
things like the Khan Academy _without ever having used the KA themselves
significantly yet_. Bandwagon praise is not good and I think constructive
criticism is needed lest we fall into the irrational exuberance trap again.

I think Sal and the rest of the crew at KA have been keeping this at bay by
acknowledging all the good will and keeping on with the daily load of videos,
enhancements to the site, open source initiatives with the exercise dashboard,
and maximizing exposure with the press while not loosing vision of what
they're doing or the quality of the material. That's a good thing.

But I do agree, the material on KA is a little too soft and I would appreciate
more higher level material but at the same accessibility and ease-of-use as
KA. OCW efforts seem to be filling this gap for awhile, but I think there
still needs to be something better. Thankfully, there's Youtubers like
commutant[1] who does the same video style lectures as Sal on partial
differential equations, numericalmethodsguy[2] who does lectures on numerical
analysis, real analysis by Francis Su[3] on the Harvey Mudd channel, UNSW
lectures[4] on engineering math, algebraic topology, and digital signal
processing, JimBobJenkins[5] who does a fantastic and intriguing lecture
series on Game Theory, TheIntegralCalc's[6] great videos on early calculus, as
well as MathDoctorBob's[7] clips on a wide-ranging list of higher maths.
Abstract algebra[8] by Benedict Gross is also another class I am currently
going through, really fascinating.

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/user/commutant>

[2] <http://www.youtube.com/user/numericalmethodsguy>

[3] <http://www.youtube.com/user/HarveyMuddCollegeEDU>

[4] <http://www.youtube.com/user/UNSWelearning>

[5] <http://www.youtube.com/user/JimBobJenkins>

[6] <http://www.youtube.com/user/TheIntegralCALC>

[7] <http://www.youtube.com/user/MathDoctorBob>

[8] <http://www.extension.harvard.edu/openlearning/math222/>

~~~
commutant
Criticizing Khan's videos on history is shooting fish in a barrel; the videos
are short and concise and history is long and complicated. I could write many
paragraphs of what is neglected or biased in just about any introductory books
on mathematics, but I wouldn't really be making a statement about their
quality. Quality would be determined by evaluating these resources by their
effectiveness at fulfilling their purpose.

This is actually the root of the controversy in my opinion: the real purpose
of all this online educational material (Khan academy, various youtube
channels, MIT OCW, etc) is still pretty multifaceted and ill-defined.

I'm making my videos because I think that well-crafted videos make material
more appealing and accessible to a lot of people on the internet. My hope is
that people who are already learning the material will supplement with my
videos and people who are introduced through my videos will get interested and
seek out other sources. In this sense I would hope that they provide a window
OUT of the "Skinner box", as would any other reasonable piece of educational
material that stokes the desire to learn.

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shii
thenewboston[1] has owned this space for a little while now and has been doing
really awesome vids on things like Python, C++, Java, Obj-C, iPhone dev, PHP,
gamedev, Cocos2d, and Adobe CS software.

It's funny because he's coming from the opposite end now, since he's been
doing mainly programming and technical content vids and has recently started
making series on things like Biology and mathematics, the forte of
khanacademy. Pretty awesome to see it all play out.

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/user/thenewboston#g/p>

~~~
elangoc
When it comes to great screencast videos for Python (+ software engineering),
I think Software Carpentry (<http://software-carpentry.org/>) is really nice.
and funny.

This might be a different from Khan Academy and thenewboston, which seem to
aim for a different level/audience. But for what it is and does, I feel like
SWC is one of those hidden gems that I wish would get discovered a little
more...

~~~
shii
Never knew about that. Thank you. I should also mention
<http://codeschool.org/> as another video-format series of lectures on topics
in CS.

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paufernandez
Other videos he has uploaded:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwO_25S_eWE>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT-gS-8p7KA>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiR6cf8Towc>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dn9XjHz33O8>

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younata
I like Sal's stuff. I've used his videos on math to review stuff I didn't
quite get during a lecture (given the quality of math professors I get, this
is often). I've watched his other stuff because they're generally interesting
(and really cool, I wish I could draw/write like he can).

I watched the video, and enjoyed it. I'm going to recommend it to my friends.
It's rather high quality (not going to talk about the download that goes with
it, I didn't look at it), and it gets across a good thing about computer
science: You can easily verify the results with your own computer.

I see that their's a lot of criticism on this, but this is already loads
better than what current uni students are getting (I just went through my
first year of uni, and I can tell you that I've not learned anything [1] in my
CS classes).

As I've stated previously, I would recommend this to my friends, as well as to
people just getting their feet wet in programming. Good job Sal, you're pretty
awesome.

[1] Except for an x86 assembler class. That class had an excellent professor,
and I now understand pointer arithmetic.

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streeter
It is really cool that Sal is trying to do everything himself, but this method
does not scale. There is no way he can create the breadth, and more
importantly, the depth, needed to cover all the topics a student will learn.
As long as Sal continues to produce all the content himself, I believe the
Khan Academy will be relegated to complementary and supplementary content.

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sidman
I use Sal's material quite abit, well mainly his finance and mathematics
material, specially if i need to remind myself of things i did back at uni. I
think Sal is most strongest in those areasgiven his background. However
looking at the rest of what he produces if your a beginner in any of the
topics his stuff is a GREAT place to start. My weapon of choice is actually
python so it would be great to see how those tutorials look like :)

Just gotta say great job to Sal though, he spreads his knowledge and i'm sure
many people around the world are greatful for it.

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duck
Seems like the video has been removed...

~~~
spicyj
Looks like he replaced it with this one:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyYp1V84Xqc>

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neovive
Introduction to programming languages and constructs are a great fit,
especially if they emphasize and build upon the concepts discussed in the
other videos. Writing and understanding the logic behind the factorial program
is a great way to reinforce that concept -- with an introduction to Python as
an added benefit. Looking forward to seeing how this develops.

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nextparadigms
I didn't look too much at this, but I've done thenewboston's Python and Java
tutorials, and they are AWESOME!

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Ganthor
Anyone else getting a "This video has been removed by the user" message?

~~~
spicyj
Yeah, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyYp1V84Xqc> seems to be a redone video.

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espeed
I'm going to try this on my mom :)

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pavel_lishin
I feel weird about suggesting this kind of stuff to my friends and family
because after writing code for basically ten years, I have absolutely no idea
whether a given tutorial is clear to someone who's never done it before.

How do people evaluate this kind of stuff?

~~~
espeed
That's why I want to do this experiment.

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krmmalik
I wish he would do javascript, would be uber cool if he suddenly had a
fascination with Node.js

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sylvinus
Hopefully John Resig (now working at Khan Academy) will help with that :-)

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gecko
Given that Khan is hosted entirely on App Engine, I wouldn't count on a
Node.js-specific tutorial series starting any time soon, but JavaScript in
general is possible.

~~~
kamens
I don't see why our hosting choice has anything to do with the tutorial
content, Señor Benjamin

~~~
spicyj
(The parent post is by the Khan Academy lead developer.)

~~~
kamens
True, but the great grandparent post is by an old friend -- and he's probably
still right about node.js in the near future ;)

~~~
rubergly
I may need to use <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2708222> to understand
the relationships discussed here.

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mattlong
FYI, looks like the video has been taken down...

~~~
spicyj
He uploaded a new one: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyYp1V84Xqc>

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ved
Vids removed ?

