In my previous note I tried to document the rather extensive past and current use of IDLE in higher education. For the near future, those of us involved in the development and use of VPython see as the best way forward two environments, the GlowScript environment (which requires no software installation), and the use of John Coady's ivisual module, running Python in an IPython server with output in IPython notebooks, using the GlowScript WebGL libraries, typically in the context of a full distribution such as Anaconda.
It is difficult to continue development of the original "classic" VPython, because the core is written C++ with the use of the Boost libraries, which has meant that only four people since its creation in 2000 have ever made significant contributions to the code. It uses antiquated CPU-based OpenGL graphics instead of the GPU. Installation can be problematic in some environments. There are some things that need to be done to make ivisual fully ready for prime time, but they look doable. The API isn't quite right, execution is slow because the module is pure Python, and the notebook environment needs some customization to make it usable by novices. We think that Cython can give us the execution speed we need, and Coady has already done some experimentation with this; it will be a big win to have the code in Python rather than C++. He has also done some preliminary experimentation with customizing the notebook. Several of us expect to help out on this. This means that at some point in the not distant future IDLE will cease to be important for our purposes, but I did want to document how important it has been. Incidentally, one of the important aspects of the GlowScript environment is that it is not uncommon, especially in high schools and community colleges, for IT departments to refuse to install Python "because open source software is very dangerous." Recently Chabay and I ran a VPython workshop where for the first time we used GlowScript, which meant that participants didn't have to install any software on their laptops. In the workshop was a high school physics teacher who brought a school Chromebook and expressed delight that he could write and run VPython programs on it, which gave him the only way he and his students could use Python and VPython. Bruce
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