[Edu-sig] Introducing Python to Engineering Students

[Stef Mientki]

hi David,

David MacQuigg wrote:
> Our mandelbrot demo is working nicely, thanks to all the help I've gotten from folks on this list.  We are using only the weave package, not the full SciPy install.  It would be nice to show some additional examples from SciPy, however, especially tools that students will find useful in later classes.
>
> The problem is I'm not sure SciPy is ready for prime time in the undergraduate curriculum.  It will look bad if this package is not as good as Matlab, which is what the students at U of A are using in many of their other courses.  I would like to get some opinions on this issue from others who may have been here before.
>
> Here are my experiences so far in getting started with SciPy, trying to run it as I expect our students would, on their own machines rather than the department's Solaris machines.
>
> 1) I'm using a Windows XP machine, similar to what most of the students are using, so anything we want them to install on their own computers must work under Windows, or at least under Cygwin.  Most students don't have Cygwin installed, but we can consider that as part of the package if we decide to go that route.  Cygwin adds benefits beyond SciPy, of course, but disk space may be an issue.
>
>   
I started about a year ago with the Enthought edition 
http://code.enthought.com/enthon/
under windows-XP, 4 machines some SP1, some SP2,
used embedded in Delphi, as a direct replacement for embedded Matlab,
everything worked like a charm.
In fact everything worked so well,
that about 3 months ago,
I decided to make a pure Python (open source) LabView equivalent with it 
(should be released in a couple of weeks).
In the meanwhile I also tried to update Scipy,
but Enthought switched to the eggs-philosophy,
which seems to be a big disaster to me ( so I rolled everything back to 
the orginal Entought suite).

I think if you send this message to the Scipy list,
you get an answer of Robert Kern himself within half an hour (if he is 
awake ;-)

cheers,
Stef Mientki