[Pythonmac-SIG] My stab at a new page

[Karl Merkley]

On Feb 9, 2006, at 1:38 PM, Bill Janssen wrote:

>> Python does not currently have an official Mac maintainer.
>
> Bingo!  And no one has stepped up to document the amazing torrent of
> productive activity since Jack "retired".  As a result, the useful
> pieces are scattered all over, the official documentation is wildly
> out of date, and there's not even a useful web page for MacPython.
>
> Add to this the fact that the pre-installed Python is widely held to
> be useless by well-respected and influential members of the community.
> A parochial and self-defeating assessment, I think.
>

 From a lurkers point of view . . .

I think the starting point of the whole page is the perfect way to 
begin.  There are many of us who find that python 2.3 is just fine for 
the kind of things that we are trying to do.  Telling a newbie that 
this is a great tool but you need to do an update is just going to be 
overwhelming.

Case in point.  The other day I volunteered some time at the local 
elementary school and the computer teacher was looking for something to 
give to some more advanced 10 to 12 year olds.   I told him that his 
Mac's all have python installed and it comes with a turtle graphics 
module. "Turtle?", he says.   "Does it work like the old Logo system?"  
After ten minutes of showing him how to get started and answering 
things like "What's this terminal window thing" he's off and running 
and very excited.   It cost him very little time, no money out of his 
budget, no software to install on 30 machines, and suddenly he has a 
whole new tool to play with and expose his kids to some simple 
programming concepts.  Now he's off learning python.   That's how it 
should work for a newbie.

    Karl