[Edu-sig] IDE for GUI development in Python

[kirby urner]

Learning GUI programming fundamentals is best accomplished with a
straight text editor IMO (vim, scintilla, whatever).

Dragging and dropping widgets from a tools palette is convenient, but
not the best way to learn GUI programming, as such IDEs tend to
insulate from the details, not teach them -- why VB in general is not
a good learning environment, a common mistake many schools make.

John Zelle's book using Tk is a good one.

I recommend intro classes go through quite a number of widget
libraries, each time doing nothing too difficult, using Gtk, wx, Qt,
even AWT via Jython maybe.  Students get a feel for what's common
(window concept), what's different (e.g. event model).

Most importantly, a lot of GUI development = web pages for visuals
these days, not thick client at all, so if the point of the course
really is GUI development, then JavaScript/CSS, some exposure to web
frameworks, e.g. ASP, is a must.

Kirby


2008/8/10 Matt K <matt.kameron at gmail.com>:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm looking at using a GUI IDE for helping my high school students to learn
> GUI programming. The kind of interface which Visual Basic offers... but in
> Python.
>
> I've found Blackadder so far, but its not free (or finished!) Do any of you
> have any (ideally free) suggestions?
>
> Thanks
>
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