Episode 38: Fun with the Arcade Library and Paul Craven

What this episode covers

Trying to find an easier way to get students excited about programming? Feeling stuck with the PyGame library? Paul Craven, maintainer of the Arcade Python library joins us to talk about using game design to teach programming. Arcade is a easy to use Python library that lets you quickly create games using OpenGL and a simple API that's perfect for beginners. Better still, the Arcade library includes a wide variety of sample programs and comprehensive documentation that is written for new programmers. Whether you want to make a platformer, recreate the Asteroids games of your youth, or teach students how to make a roguelike adventure game, the Arcade library may be a great way to start. Paul is the chair of the Computer Science department at Simpson College in Iowa. He started programming in Python more than 10 years ago and has used nearly every game library in Python to teach introductory programming. Special Guest: Paul Craven. Support Teaching Python Links: Python for absolute beginners course - [Talk Python Training - Python tutorials and courses for developers] — Learning to program can be overwhelming. Concepts and facts come at you fast and most courses don't cover many of them at all or at a beginner's pace. This is not most courses. Python for absolute beginners is our premier course for beginning developers. We start at the very beginning, teaching you the big ideas and concepts covered in a CS 101 course. Then we move on to writing increasingly complex code and applications in Python.

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