<div dir="ltr">oops, hit the send button too soon...<div><br></div><div>here's some more:</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Oct 31, 2017 at 8:41 AM, Chris Barker - NOAA Federal <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:chris.barker@noaa.gov" target="_blank">chris.barker@noaa.gov</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="auto"><span class="gmail-"><br><blockquote type="cite"><div><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><span class="gmail-m_-735946819873535665gmail-"><br>
</span>Nope. I totally get that they don’t know what a shell or command prompt is. THEY. NEED. TO. LEARN. Hiding it is not a good idea for anyone.</blockquote></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></span><div>I actually take this approach myself in my classes. However, I also have as prerequisites for my classes:</div><div><br></div><div>Some Experience in some programming language</div><div><br></div><div>And</div><div><br></div><div>Basic familiarity with the command line.</div><div><br></div><div>I then let them use whatever dev. Environment they want, while supporting and recommending a good editor and the command line.</div><div><br></div><div>However, If people want to learn python that don’t have those prerequisites, then we suggest a different class designed for total newbies.</div><div><br></div><div>In THAT class, we use a more proscribed dev environment so that everyone is doing the same thing in the same way. It was IDLE, and has lately been PyCharm.</div><div><br></div><div>And the intro to data analytics class uses Anaconda and the Jupyter notebook.</div><div><br></div><div>My point?</div><span class="gmail-"><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><div>We're not in the business of making judgements about who should and shouldn't become Python programmers - we're in the business of making sure that Python is accessible to as many people as possible by removing irrelevant barriers to adoption, </div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></span><div>Sure, but who is “we”? I think “we” is the python community, not the cPython developers.</div><div><br></div><div>So providing an environment that makes it easy and obvious to install packages is a great idea, but I think it’s the job of IDEs and other higher level tools, not the REPL.</div><div><br></div><div>If we need to add a feature to Python itself to make it easier for IDEs and the like to implement dynamic package adding, then by all means, let’s do it.</div><div><br></div><div>Final note:</div><div><br></div><div>I DO see a lot of questions ( on mailing lists, etc) from folks that try to type “pip install something” at the python command line. </div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>And sure, some of those are completly clueless about what a command line is and how to use it, but others DO have an idea about the command line, but dont know that:</div><div><br></div><font face="monospace, monospace">>>> pip install something<br> File "<stdin>", line 1<br> pip install something<br> ^<br>SyntaxError: invalid syntax</font><div><br></div><div>means: "this was supposed to be run at the command prompt"</div><div><br></div><div>So I think defining a "pip" builtin that simply gave a helpful message would be a good start.</div><div><br></div><div>(hmm, it's a syntax error, so not as simple as a builtin -- but it could be caught somehow to give a better message)</div><div> </div><div>At the end of the day, python is an open source programming language -- it simply is NOT ever going to provide one complete well integrated environment --we'll just have to live with that.</div><div><br></div><div>-CHB</div><div><br></div></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><br>Christopher Barker, Ph.D.<br>Oceanographer<br><br>Emergency Response Division<br>NOAA/NOS/OR&R (206) 526-6959 voice<br>7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax<br>Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception<br><br><a href="mailto:Chris.Barker@noaa.gov" target="_blank">Chris.Barker@noaa.gov</a></div>
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