[Idle-dev] Running beginner Pythons

[Aivar Annamaa]

Hi!

Maybe we should add a different interface for constructing standard 
Python programs?

Grace (http://gracelang.org/applications/) is a textual language meant 
for learning programs and they built a Scratch-like editor for 
constructing Grace programs 
(http://homepages.ecs.vuw.ac.nz/~mwh/minigrace/tiled , 
http://homepages.ecs.vuw.ac.nz/~mwh/vissoft2014.pdf)

Similar thing could be done for Python. In fact, some of my students 
have already created a prototype: https://github.com/taivop/Monty

I have plans to integrate this into Thonny, a Python IDE meant for 
beginners (http://thonny.cs.ut.ee/ , 
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2729094.2754849&coll=DL&dl=GUIDE&CFID=729521140&CFTOKEN=81247902). 
We recently used it successfully for teaching 1000 learners in a MOOC 
organized by University of Tartu.

I agree with Serhiy that IDLE is not best place for such experiments. 
Thonny, on the other hand is built specifically for beginners and we 
welcome all kinds of new ideas. There is a plugin API available (not 
documented yet, but I'll get to it very soon).

best regards,
Aivar