[Tutor] idle??

[Sydney Shall]

On 13/01/2016 23:10, Danny Yoo wrote:
>>> So, where does IDLE fit into this....
>>
>> IDLE is a sad little “IDE”, which is really ugly, because it’s written
>> in Tk. It lacks many IDE features. It comes with a really basic
>> debugger (that doesn’t even highlight the line that is being currently
>> executed…), function signature hinting, and some code completion.
>>
>> And it doesn’t even do something as basic as line numbering.
>
> Hi Chris,
>
> The quality of a beginner-level IDE might not necessarily be based on
> the number of features it has.  For someone who's starting out, IDLE
> is probably fine because it gets out of your way.  It lets you type
> programs and evaluate them.  For a beginner, that might just be enough
> to focus on learning the language.
>
>
> (Aside: I've had the contrary experience with Eclipse, for example,
> which is as full-featured as they come, but makes me feel like I'm
> staring at the flight controls of a space shuttle, with all this stuff
> about launchers and Luna and such.  I can get productive with it  It
> takes my a long time to learn.  I suppose I could say the same thing
> about Emacs.)
>
>
> That is, many features might be a *distraction* from learning to
> program.  Tools for beginners should be measured by criteria for
> learning, and that might not match with the features we care about as
> professional developers.  But maybe that's a controversial opinion.
>
> I think IDLE is ok for what it's designed for: to provide a simple,
> textual environment for writing and running simple Python programs.
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I was a beginner who began with >idle< following advice from this list.
I found it invaluable for the reason Danny gives. More complex 
environments befuddled me, and distracted me from learning Python.
I do not use it any longer. I now use IPython which I like a lot.
But for beginners I would recommend it, speaking as a debutante myself.

I hope that Ma Laura gets better soon. But please take care and have it 
seen to or you will have arthritis later. I have never met nor 
corresponded with the fine woman, but I think she is >terrible> [in 
French, otherwise in English wonderful.]

-- 
Sydney