Python education survey

[K Richard Pixley]

On 12/27/11 10:26 , Andrew Berg wrote:
> On 12/27/2011 11:59 AM, K Richard Pixley wrote:
>> You'd do better to encourage eclipse, but setting that up isn't
>> trivial either.
> IIRC, all I had to do to set up PyDev was copy a URL to Eclipse's
> "Install New Software" wizard, and have Eclipse download and install it.
> Extra steps are needed if a different implementation of Python (e.g.
> Jython) is needed, but other than that, the user only needs to specify a
> couple options (e.g. Python grammar version) at project creation time.
> This assumes that Python is already installed, but why wouldn't it be?

You still need to match versions of PyDev to versions of Eclipse to 
versions of operating system to versions of other eclipse plugins.  I 
spent a few days trying to get it together once and came to the 
conclusion that it was a much bigger effort than I was willing to commit to.

>> You could create your own distribution of eclipse, but
>> then you have that "only useful for python" problem again.
> AFAIK, Eclipse should always be good for Java unless you do some serious
> hacking.

Depends on which versions of eclipse, java, os, other plugins, etc.

>> If students are going to go anywhere else after this class, they're
>> going to need to either be able to learn to switch editors or find an
>> editor they can use more generally.
> There are a ton of editors that have syntax highlighting and other
> little features for many languages.

Exactly.  My preference is emacs but I'll admit that the learning curve 
there is pretty high by today's standards.  (Whether it's worth the 
effort is a debatable point.)  There are certainly many others.

--rich