On Wed, Mar 16, 2016 at 8:29 AM, Andrew Barnert via Python-ideas <python-ideas@python.org> wrote:

If this is only intended for rank beginners, what about just disabling the checkbox, with a warning, if there's already a program named "Python" anywhere on the PATH? Then, when someone gets into trouble because they're installing two Pythons, they'll get a warning and be able to ask their teacher or search StackOverflow

please no -- it should be easy and obvious to "upgrade" python -- i.e. the last one you installed is what "just works".

If the default does that, then a non-defautl option to not override the existing one would be nice:

"""

Warning: there is an existing python installed on this system: check here if you want to continue to have the old version be used as the default. Leve the box unchecked if you want the version to be the new default.

"""

or something like that.

After all, what do people expect when they have MSWord version X, and then install MSWord version X+1 ? They expect that when they run Word after that, they'll get the new version. Is this going to surprise anyone???

-CHB

Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
Oceanographer

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