[Edu-sig] Thonny, a new IDE for teaching programming

[Aivar Annamaa]

On 7.03.2016 0:23, Al Sweigart wrote:
> How does it compare to Philip Guo's Python Tutor? 
> http://www.pythontutor.com/ I really like how this tool can trace 
> forwards and backwards through the program.

Backwards tracing is really nice feature, that Thonny doesn't support yet.

I think that pragmatically the most important difference is that 
Pythontutor is mostly a runtime visualizer with possibility to submit 
your own (small) programs, whereas Thonny tries to be both a 
beginner-friendly IDE and then a runtime visualizer. I believe the usage 
of Pythontutor is usally complemented with separate IDE (eg. IDLE), but 
*Thonny wants to be IDLE and Pythontutor combined*. Actually Thonny 
includes even a Python distribution, so that total beginners need to 
install only one thing to their computers.

The differences in visualization:

*I believe Thonny's way of visualizing function call is superior*, 
because its stack frames contain the source code, allowing indication 
where the "execution point" lies on each frame. Pythontutor (like most 
professional IDES) visualizes function calls as jumps in the source code 
and I've seen that this messes up students' model about function calls. 
For many students this broken model becomes the roadblock for 
understanding recursion.

If I understand correctly, then *Pythontutor can't show how an 
expression gets evaluated stepwise* (pleas correct me if i'm wrong). 
Thonny can.

Pythontutor uses arrows for explaining *references*, Thonny uses 
variables table with names => addresses and heap table with addresses => 
values. I think Pythontutor's solution is more intuitive, but Thonny's 
solution is more scalable.

best regards,
Aivar
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