Moved from the educational wikis at https://coedit.net/ to here:
Common Problems Beginners Have
The [https://www.alice.org/ Alice] 3D project developed a 3D programming environment for beginners. They used ["Python"] as the programming language originally (now switched to something else). There were two Python-specific issues that were problematic for beginners: the case-sensitivity of the language ("variable1" is not the same as "Variable1"), and integer division (a carryover from C, 3/4 = 0, not 0.75 because 0 is an integer and 0.75 is a float). The latter issue has been fixed, but the former has not and very likely never will. See this [https://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=5028 interview] in Linux Journal and this [https://www.alice.org/advancedtutorial/ConwayDissertation.PDF dissertation] for more details.
I have patches to implement both of these features in the [https://boo.codehaus.org/ Boo] programming language, which is virtually identical to Python, and they will appear in a release of boo in the near future.
This article ([https://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/python/2004/02/05/learn_python.html Common Mistakes of Python Programmers]) lists other common errors seen in Python training classes. Many result from the use of Python's interactive prompt and the IDLE text-based python development environment. Some of these problems might be solved by using IPython instead, but in general I never used (nor currently use) python's interactive prompt to develop applications.
- Another common error mentioned in the above article is forgetting to add a colon (:) at the end of if statements, class declarations, etc.
Even for advanced users there are features of the Python language that can cause difficulties. See [https://zephyrfalcon.org/labs/python_pitfalls.html 10 Python pitfalls] and [https://www.amk.ca/python/writing/warts.html Python warts].
Comments, Potential Solutions
The [https://pychecker.sourceforge.net/ PyChecker] module can alert users to many common errors. There also is a tool called [https://www.logilab.org/projects/pylint PyLint].
To see languages that have been used successfully with beginners and children, see Logo, !HyperTalk (used in HyperCard and SuperCard), HTML, JavaScript, variants of Basic, etc.
Are students learning python to "learn programming" or to develop real applications? Does the IDLE interactive prompt help or hinder either? See https://developers.coedit.net/StudentsDevelopingEducationalSoftware for examples of students doing real application development and RapidPrototyping (although these are college students and in some cases CS majors who already know how to program).