On Tuesday, December 20, 2011 4:51:00 AM UTC+1, Raymond Hettinger wrote: > Do you use IDLE when teaching Python? > If not, what is the tool of choice? > > Students may not be experienced with the command-line and may be > running Windows, Linux, or Macs. Ideally, the tool or IDE will be > easy to install and configure (startup directory, path, associated > with a particular version of Python etc). > > Though an Emacs user myself, I've been teaching with IDLE because it's > free; it runs on multiple OSes, it has tooltips and code colorization > and easy indent/dedent/comment/uncomment commands, it has tab > completion; it allows easy editing at the interactive prompt; it has > an easy run-script command (F5); it has direct access to source code > (File OpenModule) and a class browser (Cntl+B). > > On the downside, some python distros aren't built with the requisite > Tcl/Tk support; some distros like the Mac OS ship with a broken Tcl/Tk > so users have to install a fix to that as well; and IDLE sometimes > just freezes for no reason. It also doesn't have an easy way to > specify the startup directory. > > If your goal is to quickly get new users up and running in Python, > what IDE or editor do you recommend? > > > Raymond
If you want an easy to use, cross-platform editor with lots of nice features I would also recommend Sulbime Text 2. You would have to teach how to use the terminal on different platforms but for basic stuff, like running a python program it's basically the same on Linux, Windows and OSX. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
