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Sal Khan has started videos about Python
- paufernandez 15y agoOther videos he has uploaded: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwO_25S_eWE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwO_25S_eWE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT-gS-8p7KA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT-gS-8p7KA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiR6cf8Towc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiR6cf8Towc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dn9XjHz33O8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dn9XjHz33O8
- krmmalik 15y agoI wish he would do javascript, would be uber cool if he suddenly had a fascination with Node.js
- sylvinus 15y agoHopefully John Resig (now working at Khan Academy) will help with that :-)
- gecko 15y agoGiven 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.
- kenjackson 15y agoNot only is Javascript possible, but its the simplest for average kid to start with. No download required. I love Eloquent JS for further study. Just browse the web and have an interactive tutorial that goes into pretty good depth. And as someone noted, with Resig there, this is just a matter of time.
- igorgue 15y agoIt's cool that everyone has a JavaScript environment on their machines, but I think that if you want to learn programming downloading Python is not a problem. JavaScript is great for me when friends ask me: "Hey you know programming right? Show me something on my computer" but if they want to learn programming, I'd just ask them to download Python or Ruby.
- kenjackson 15y agoHonestly, for me, if they're interested in the web or hobby dev, I think JS is the better choice, even download aside. The path from HTML to JS to JQuery and CSS in there somewhere seems like a more useful path for most people nowadays. Once they get that, Ruby/Python will come relatively easy.
- zaidf 15y agoDesigning with JavaScript by Nick Heinle was one of my first book purchases. I studied the crap out of it in middle school. Javascript is great as intro. Kids are naturally drawn to shiny things and you can create plenty of shiny stuff with Javascript with minimal setup. Once you hit the natural limit("how do I save the scores!"), you can move on to PHP/python etc.
- kamens 15y agoI don't see why our hosting choice has anything to do with the tutorial content, Señor Benjamin
- spicyj 15y ago(The parent post is by the Khan Academy lead developer.)
- kamens 15y agoTrue, but the great grandparent post is by an old friend -- and he's probably still right about node.js in the near future ;)
- rubergly 15y agoI may need to use http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2708222 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2708222 to understand the relationships discussed here.
- krmmalik 15y agoGlad someone chimed in, because i didnt have a clue who was what and what was who
- gecko 15y agoPara enseñar se requiere de experiencia con lo que uno sabe. I assumed that the lack of experience with Node.js would at least somewhat preclude teaching its best usages. On the other hand, what the fuck do I know. I'm a Smalltalk developer leading a .NET front-end to a Python project. We miss you, kamens. :(
- kamens 15y agoYour assumption was correct. And same to all of you.
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- MostAwesomeDude 15y agoI wish he would do Python; it would be über-cool if he suddenly had a fascination with Twisted. :3
- shii 15y agothenewboston[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 http://www.youtube.com/user/thenewboston#g/p
- elangoc 15y agoWhen it comes to great screencast videos for Python (+ software engineering), I think Software Carpentry (http://software-carpentry.org/ 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 15y agoNever knew about that. Thank you. I should also mention http://codeschool.org/ http://codeschool.org/ as another video-format series of lectures on topics in CS.
- blhack 15y agoI'm glad I'm not the only "thenewboston" fan on HN. He really does a great job of making objective C approachable. Watching his videos were a huge help to me.
- nextparadigms 15y agoIf only he had an Android dev tutorial when I wanted to learn it. Does he still have like only 4 Android tutorials? Because that's too bad. I really liked his Python and Java ones.
- espeed 15y agoI'm going to try this on my mom :)
- pavel_lishin 15y agoI 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 15y agoThat's why I want to do this experiment.
- edw 15y agoThere 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.
- irahul 15y agoI don't think Khan claimed about teaching expert level material. `Superficiality` is a strong word. Zed Shaw's LPTHW is for beginners, but not superficial. Similarly, most of Khan's lectures target a particular audience. Some of his lectures are advanced, some are intermediate, some are for beginners...just the way it should be. Khan himself responded to one of superficiality claims here on HN(the one about history lessons).
- spicyj 15y agoLink to his response: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2633796 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2633796
- shii 15y agoThis 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 http://www.youtube.com/user/commutant [2] http://www.youtube.com/user/numericalmethodsguy http://www.youtube.com/user/numericalmethodsguy [3] http://www.youtube.com/user/HarveyMuddCollegeEDU http://www.youtube.com/user/HarveyMuddCollegeEDU [4] http://www.youtube.com/user/UNSWelearning http://www.youtube.com/user/UNSWelearning [5] http://www.youtube.com/user/JimBobJenkins http://www.youtube.com/user/JimBobJenkins [6] http://www.youtube.com/user/TheIntegralCALC http://www.youtube.com/user/TheIntegralCALC [7] http://www.youtube.com/user/MathDoctorBob http://www.youtube.com/user/MathDoctorBob [8] http://www.extension.harvard.edu/openlearning/math222/ http://www.extension.harvard.edu/openlearning/math222/
- hebejebelus 15y agoInteresting, 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 15y agoI 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 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyYp1V84Xqc Hopefully a mod can change the link.
- sidman 15y agoI 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.
- nextparadigms 15y agoI didn't look too much at this, but I've done thenewboston's Python and Java tutorials, and they are AWESOME!
- Locke1689 15y agoHe'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.
- spicyj 15y agoI agree with you about the filename, I think PyDoc is probably overkill for something so simple. There's no reason to confuse new people with PyDoc. (Does Zed use PyDoc in LPTHW? No. (Except for the pydoc command suggested for reference.))
- Locke1689 15y agoI'm not sure why PyDoc is so complicated: just explain it like a comment that you only put in certain places. You don't have to explain build tool integration or anything.
- spicyj 15y agoThe video was trying to show a simple program; it's better for less syntax (often confusing for beginners) to have to be explained, at least at the start.
- duck 15y agoSeems like the video has been removed...
- spicyj 15y agoLooks like he replaced it with this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyYp1V84Xqc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyYp1V84Xqc
- Ganthor 15y agoAnyone else getting a "This video has been removed by the user" message?
- mattlong 15y agoFYI, looks like the video has been taken down...
- spicyj 15y agoHe uploaded a new one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyYp1V84Xqc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyYp1V84Xqc
- younata 15y agoI 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.
- neovive 15y agoIntroduction 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.
- streeter 15y agoIt 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.
- bestwc 15y agoI has been removed by the user.
- ved 15y agoVids removed ?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]