Option in between: have students implement/understand it once, and then use it as a proper abstraction for the rest of the course. PyTamaro's web platform offers special support, dubbed "toolbox", to quickly save and reuse functions across activities (see chiodini.org/publications...).

(This actually has the advantage of showing explicitly the difference between "graphics coordinates" and "math coordinates", especially if students are asked to implement these functions at some point.)

Perhaps I didn't fully understand the point you were trying to make?

I'm not sure I understand the "building a Cartesian system on top of compositional graphics is difficult" bit.

Here's a small example that uses PyTamaro to implement a local cartesian coordinate system: pytamaro.si.usi.ch/playground?c...

Cool work, and thanks for checking out and mentioning PyTamaro! I agree that a (local) coordinate system is necessary to model the physical world, which many games use for some parts. (Unfortunately, students will end up using them in hacky ways even for the parts that are not about coordinates...)

Classic Shriram. Pretends to pass as an AI by using "delve"; fails by inserting a typo.