[Idle-dev] The Future of Python

[Bruce Sherwood]

Yes, we're currently using VIDLE, but the differences between VIDLE and
IDLE are not significant in the context of the criticisms of IDLE, and
moreover, thanks to Terry's and other work, I'm hopeful that it will soon
be possible to abandon VIDLE.

Upon reflection, I think I may see why Jessica feels that IDLE is
unsuitable for her new users and why I find it quite adequate. I think
she's teaching programming and computer science, so that even if the people
are new to programming it makes sense to introduce them right from the
start to procedures and tools that are appropriate for computing
professionals.

The audience I try to serve is very different, engineering and science
students in the two-semester "calculus-based" intro physics course they are
required to take. Ruth Chabay and I have integrated computational modeling
into this course, which is highly unusual but extremely important, given
that computational modeling is co-equal with theory and experiment, not
just in physics but in all STEM disciplines (STEM = Science, Technology,
Engineering, and Mathematics). Alas, computational modeling is way
under-represented in undergraduate STEM education, and we're trying to
address that problem.

We want the students to write complete algorithms for modeling physical
systems, which means no black boxes: no fancy numerical integration
techniques or canned functions, and no simply adjusting parameters in an
existing model. The problem is that few of these students have ever written
a computer program before, and there isn't time to teach programming, much
less computer science, in the crowded physics course.

Python has proven to be adequately clean and simple that we can get
students up and running very quickly (we teach a very small subset of
Python -- what is a variable, an assignment statement, a while loop, and an
if statement). And VPython lets them make navigable 3D animations as a side
effect of their physics computations. For these students, in this course,
IDLE is the right editor to use. It comes with Python (or currently VIDLE
comes with VPython), and there's almost nothing to learn because all the
student will do with it is edit a program, run it, make changes, and run
again. Nothing about breakpoints or dealing with multiple files, etc.

On a loosely related topic, there is a long thread on the Brython forum
initiated by me that has led to the Brython people taking it as an
interesting challenge and use of Brython to make it possible to write
GlowScript programs in Python, by writing a Brython wrapper of the
GlowScript libraries, which are written in JavaScript:

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups&hl=en#!topic/brython/p2oz_BK1_3A

Billy Earney quickly mocked up a partial proof of concept that made it
possible for the first time to see something resembling Python using the
GlowScript libraries to display a rotating 3D cube, with mouse interactions
to rotate and zoom the camera. I'm delighted that they've taken an interest
in this.

Bruce



On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 7:32 PM, phil jones <interstar at gmail.com> wrote:

> But if I understand correctly, you're using VIDLE not IDLE? Or did I
> get that wrong?
>
>
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