Python education survey

[Eelco]

I taught a Python class just recently, and thought long and hard about
this problem. I settled on PyCharm and was happy with that.

My reasons:
 - available on all main platoforms
 - not entirely broken code completion (ive tried literally every
python editor, and pycharm is the only one that meets this requirement
on all platforms. Try import numpy; numpy.array. 90% of editors with
'code completion' will fail that simple benchmark. The only thing
worse than no completion list is an incomplete list of completions.
Only pyscripter is better in this regard, but win-only.)
 - easy installation
 - integrated console
 - integrated debugger
 - free (for classroom use)
 - fairly uncluttered

> I recently started using PyCharm personally, but not for my courses.
> There's a free OSS developers licence and it's a really nice (although
> young and somewhat resource hungry) IDE, but you can't really advocate a
> non-free IDE for teaching. "Buy me as a teacher, and, BTW, buy this IDE for
> everyone as well or I won't teach you"? Doesn't quite work.

PyCharm provides a free 1 year classroom license.

> For teaching, I think it's better to come around with something simpler
> than a full-blown IDE, so that you can show off interactive development,
> help() and other introspection features. IMHO much better than hiding all
> that behind an IDE, especially behind the additional complexity of an IDE.
> IPython is much better suited to present an interactive language like Python.

PyCharm has an integrated interpreter (a wrapper around Ipython that
superimposes the pycharm based code completion stuff).
Plus, it does not start by default into a clutter-overload mode, and
if you click away a pane or two, you have a rather clean editor.

Aside from worrying about your editor, worry about how to install
python. As a windows user, I had scarcely imagined the nightmares of
installing everything on all platforms, different OS versions, and so
forth. DONT install/compile via the command line, and DO use a
precompiled distro like enthought. Macosx does not come with a C
compiler, and your only recourse is the 4-gig xcode download. That is,
if *friggin ITunes* lets you install it, and does not silently screw
up your installation. I could go on, but anyway you get the point.
Unless its your own computer, anything more complex than double
clicking an installer WILL GO WRONG, and spending hours debugging
other peoples computers is not how you want to spend your time.