[Edu-sig] IDE for GUI development in Python

[Matt K]

Thanks for all the suggestions!
Here are the responses (from both mailing lists):

*Winston* - PythonCard looks interesting. However I cannot see any sample
code on the website. Would you be able to send me some sample code that your
students may have written? Just a small amount so that I can gauge the
simplicity for my students.

*Garry* - I'm after software to help students design their own GUI, rather
than simply a graphical programming environment. Sorry that I was unclear!

*Kirby* - What level do you teach? I'm teaching Year 11 students and my goal
is certainly not for students to be competent at programming GUIs. My goal
is for them to be competent at the basics: loops, data structures etc. I'm
hiding many things from them including classes - although we do use classes
we use them as no more than a C struct (since this is in line with the
secondary school curriculum). Occasionally we need to deviate from this but
this is vary rare. The need for GUI is because we are coding a real world
problem which requires a GUI. Hence I am after something that is quick and
simple, and I don't mind if they come out saying "I really understand
programming although I don't really get how the GUI linked in."

*Massimo, web2py* - I'm looking for a non-web based solution. We already do
cgi-scripting in Year 10 and the project will involve some cgi. But it also
needs a stand-alone executable (for a different set of users).

*Massimo, QT* - I have the same comment as I gave to Winston, above. Do you
have any sample code from students who have written a relatively simplistic
GUI?

*Tim and Dean* - Wing looks fantastic as a development environment and I
will consider switching to it for the general Python programming (replacing
the Python IDLE which we're mostly using at the moment). That being said it
doesn't offer direct GUI development tools so it doesn't solve my short term
problem.

*David* - I appreciate your comments re: BlackAdder and Qt. And my
reservation with Tk is not the typing... its that the students will not
understand the code that they are typing sufficiently well to be able to
modify it.


*Thanks so much for all your help - further comments are still welcome =)
Matt*


On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 11:28 AM, Matt K <matt.kameron at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm looking at using a GUI IDE for helping my high school students to learn
> GUI programming. The kind of interface which Visual Basic offers... but in
> Python.
>
> I've found Blackadder so far, but its not free (or finished!) Do any of you
> have any (ideally free) suggestions?
>
> Thanks
>
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