[Edu-sig] Re: The right learning environment

[arthur.siegel@rsmi.com]

>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