[BioPython] Python as educational tool

[=?iso-8859-1?Q?Johannes_H=FCsing?=]

Hi all subscribers,


I am entirely new to this list and, I'll have to add, the whole topic.
We are planning a bridging course for scientists towards bioinformatics.
The course is to last a whole year and contains a par force tour through
medicine, genomics, data management, statistics, and the like.

The issue is about how to teach introductory programming. The notion goes 
that Python is a clean and tidy language useful for introductory informatics.
The mere existence of a project like biopython sounds like a viable 
choice. From short glances over the homepage, however, my impression is that
one still has to set a high tolerance threshold regarding initial frust-
ration before one actually sees some nice results. Of course, this is what
programming is about, but given your impression of the state of the project,
do you think that a biologist after, say, six weeks of python tuition, could 
seriously learn more about computational molecular biology using parts of
the project?

I am talking about a potential enlargement of the user base here, so I am 
expecting biased answers :-), yet I would heartily welcome any answers 
to my question.

Yours


Johannes