On Sun, 12 Nov 2017 23:18:26 +1000 Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan@gmail.com> wrote:
We haven't forgotten our early years - we've just spent years (both individually and collectively) working on the problem of helping people get started with software development, and thus have a very good idea as to what *doesn't* work, as well as what *does* work.
The latter list is currently fairly short:
* having a friend or colleague walk them through it * "Install Parties", like those Django Girls runs (i.e. running a pre-tutorial event, specifically focused on getting a working environment set up) * highly prescriptive learning environments, whether online ones (like Grok Learning, trinket.io, PythonAnywhere, etc), or locally installed ones (like PyCharm Educational Edition, the Anaconda distribution, etc)
Not wanting to nitpick, but I don't think the Anaconda distribution is "highly prescriptive". It's a software distribution with scientific computing as its main focus, but perfectly usable for ordinary Python programming. It's not more prescriptive than Debian, which by its philosophy is directed primarily towards sysadmin crowds but also used by some people on their personal desktops. Also, you can create custom Anaconda-like distributions to provide the desired environment to your students in an executable installer (*). I'm not sure how usable that option is, but it definitely exists, is open source and cross-platform. (*) https://github.com/conda/constructor Regards Antoine.