Snake workshop improvements

Braindump of TODOs after the first iteration of the Snake workshop.

(Checked means solved in my fork, not necessarily merged here)

• Adapt Django Girls' Intro to Python, extending it to include every language/stdlib feature we'll need (with exceptions below). We need some examples of functionality; let's use stuff that'll make people go oh, I knew this already! afterwards.

  • floor division
  • list slicing
  • del (instead of pop())
  • tuples
  • in operator
  • list.remove
  • zip() (use a more advanced example with zip – item-and-the-next with staggred lists – just before a break, so advanced people can think about it while others just clear their head)
  • import
    • random.randrange()
  • return
  • Comments
  • class? (Without __init__, but with general methods, this seems doable – and using it could save time refactoring!)
  • not decorators – those are best explained on Pyglet
  • etc.

• Print out cheatsheets, ideally:

  • Keyboard
  • Lists
  • Dictionaries
  • Basic control structures (loops, if/else, functions)?

• Introduce a simple & consistent poor man's versioning scheme very early after writing the first .py file: copy the file to another name, then clear the current file.

• About the class: explain what a "class" is conceptually (a "blueprint"), show how to write one, but don't go in detail and don't aim for thorough understanding.

• Don't split the game into two files. That takes too much time and is hard to manage on a projector.

• Warn about naming a file pyglet.py, random.py & similar

• Edges of the screen should kill the snake; don't do the toroidal topology. It's exciting for the mathematician, but messes up tile selection which is already more than complicated enough. Move this to a "possible extensions" section at the end

• Do a "possible extensions" section at the end. There should be proper materials to walk you through:

  • Improvements of controls
  • Toroidal topology
  • Score keeping
  • Two-snake multiplayer
  • Gradually sSpeeding up
  • Split State, plug it into a provided console or web client
  • Use pyinstaller to make an `exe file
  • etc.

• Discourage creating the virtualenv on the desktop (actually, just fix #313 and make sure the result is usable for workshops)

• Skip intro to Pyglet; explain all that on the game itself: draw, move, and resize a green square. Maybe add a simple mouse handler with print(), which won't be used in the actual game (that makes it possible to ask "what do the arguments mean?" without giving an answer).

• Use one language (Czech/English) consistently.

• Include answers to the hard problem. With diagrams. (This includes removing the code snippet with ???, which isn't syntax-highlighted nicely.)

• Better time management. Set a fixed schedule. The first workshop wasn't ideal, but its timings were:

  • 9-12:30: installation; intro to Python
  • (Lunch)
  • 13:30-14:00 Intro to Pyglet
  • 14:00-15:40 Drawing
  • (Break)
  • 16:10-18:00 Logic (another 15-30 min would be great to polish the game, but we had to end)

• Have regular WC breaks.

• Make a properly dumbed down-version of the intro to command line. Mention ↑ and Tab; avoid mkdir and other stuff you can click up graphically. Mention how to copy from/to the command line. Merge improvements to the beginners' course intro.

• https://github.com/pyvec/naucse.python.cz/issues/667

Start by reviewing the workshop TODOs against Django Girls' Intro to Python, the Pyglet material, the beginners' course command-line intro, and linked issue #667. The issue provides no named files, tests, entry point, or single completion boundary; done would require defining and completing a scoped subset of these workshop improvements.