Re: The right learning environment
Yet the latter is a wonderfuls scratch pad in which to test/learn the basics of the language, with immediate feedback. To bypass the shell is to make a huge pedagogical error, IMO.
Again - it was fundamental to my attraction to Python, and was used and is used by myself as an essential ingredient to a Python 'environment'. My counter-point - if any - is that it is particularly exciting as a feature when one understands it to be a builtin Python capacity. Mathias' experience is that there are Python users who don't understand the interactive prompt capabilities of Python, and rightl;y bemoans the fact. Don't know who those users are or how they got that way. I make the more minor point that it is a shame if folks would misunderstand that the interactive promt is something brought to them by and available only through IDLE. Though I find IDLE an elegant and fully satisfactory way to get at it. How to get it all? Art
At 01:36 PM 3/21/2002 -0500, arthur.siegel@rsmi.com wrote:
Mathias' experience is that there are Python users who don't understand the interactive prompt capabilities of Python, and rightl;y bemoans the fact. Don't know who those users are or how they got that way.
I don't think Mathias was directly discussing Python users. He's a Scheme guy. The DrScheme shell is specifically designed for teaching in that it allows the user to select the level of Scheme -- more features become available at higher levels. There's no chance anyone using his curriculum out of Rice University would ever miss the fact that PLT Scheme has a shell mode. They might miss if it has a non-shell mode, if they quit to early. Python users may sometimes miss the Python shell because they're self-tutoring over the internet and immediately think in terms of scripts ala programming languages with no shell mode. And for many, this remains the focus, as they're primarily interested in cgi type stuff (for example) -- the kinds of programs you leave running in the background while you, the programmer, catch some Zs (daemons).
I make the more minor point that it is a shame if folks would misunderstand that the interactive promt is something brought to them by and available only through IDLE.
I agree. Equally a shame if they only use the Python shell in a DOS box, if in Windows, which environment is especially lame (i.e. no way to get to previously entered commands with an uparrow, except maybe in Win2000 and above). Compared with IDLE, I find the DOS shell to be extremely hard to use. In GUI world, I'd favor showing a sampling of shells, freeing students from the idea that there's only one way to go. So it should always be IDLE and... never IDLE only. The Linux text-based shell, in an X-Term window, is more usable. Kirby
Maybe, the following link will be of interest to all Python shell lowers: http://www-hep.colorado.edu/~fperez/ipython/ I like IPython and right now we use it in teaching of basics of Numerical Analysis (Python + Numeric + SciPy + Kmatplot beying used as a good substitute for commercial Matlab). Mike
participants (3)
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arthur.siegel＠rsmi.com -
Kirby Urner -
Michal Kaukic