[Edu-sig] Python Editor / IDE for HS students

[Kevin Driscoll]

> I've generally used IDLE as well.  I think Vim gets in the way if you
> don't have the reflexes.  With older adults, there's often a strong
> allegiance to a text editor and it's considered presumptuous for a
> teacher to specify which one, unless there's a strong rationale for
> using something special.

In a beginner's course, it's really helpful to have every student
using the SAME text editor.  Last year, some of my more experienced
students were adamant about sticking with IDLE while the rest of us
used Textpad.  It was a little messy because some kids had a fake-DOS
window open to access the interpreter while others were using the
interpreter window in IDLE.  Visual consistency from my projection to
student desktops can help some students through difficult new
concepts.

I teach a little about vi (and pico/nano) in a unit about bash.  I
like that they'll be able to find vi(m) on just about any
unix/linux/bsd machine they see from now until the end of computing.

I'll give Crust/Alamode a look but probably won't include it in this
rev of the diskimage though I might use something similar for the
spring semester.

Last year, instead of going to wxpython for GUI development, we went
to CGI programming.  The kids already had a sophisticated
understanding of XHTML/CSS so they could make Python to generate XHTML
code pretty quickly.   There they learned about many conventional
windows components via XHTML forms.

Art, thanks for the support on SciTE, I'll let you know how it goes.

Kevin