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
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