[Edu-sig] would you use PythonCard?

[Roman Suzi]

On Sun, 2 Sep 2001, Kirby Urner wrote:

>>OK. Right now I can't show nice higher level GUI builder
>>for Python. That means that Python is out of reach for those educational
>>users who need to perform concrete tasks fast.
>>THis is not good.

>Your saying "concrete tasks" aren't doable without widgets
>seems too broad.  *Some* concrete tasks.  But I resist the
>tendency to equate programming with GUI development.

By concrete tasks I had in mind creating programs for methodological
support in different subjects by making multimedia-like things easily.
Things, which teachers always have their own opinion about. I met many
teachers, which were dissatisfied with whatever they saw "ready-maid" and
wanted their own CAE courseware... I agree that browsers probably
solve more than half of the problem, but more could be easier done
with means of traditional applications.

>One of the books I use is "Concrete Mathematics" and I
>can do a lot of the stuff in that book with no GUI
>beyond IDLE itself.  Even graphics can be done without
>writing a GUI interface, e.g. the VPython kit pops up
>real time graphical content in a Tk window, in a modified
>IDLE.  Or for non-real-time graphics (e.g. geometry stuff),
>you can output a text file and render it in Povray.
>I do this all the time with no overhead invested in a
>Tk-style interface (beyond IDLE).

There is usually no problem with programming teachers: they could find
suitable tools. The problem is with those who can write, draw and link
parts together with GUI, but which programming capability is nearly
zero. And this is what PythonCard + Python are going to change.

Sincerely yours, Roman Suzi
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