[Edu-sig] The right learning environment

[Kirby Urner]

>
>Not sure anyone is interested in reviving meta-discussions and
>past hysterias.  But the truth is that I have sometimes felt
>marginalized here by pressing what I think is a quite reasonable
>and defensible point of view. So I do feel a bit compelled to
>throw something like this up when I come across it.
>
>Art

I have nothing against notepad to start if that's what a user
is already comfortable with, but would hope a user would
outgrow it quickly, and that freeware assets could soon
provide at least color coding.  Being able to highlight
open-close parentheses is less necessary in Python than
Scheme or some other languages, but is still a nice feature.
The ability to indent whole blocks at once is more relevant.

If the language offers a shell, one should also use the shell,
without even a text editor.  Entering 1+1 to get 2 is even more
basic than 'Hello World'.  The command line just sits there,
waiting to give immediate feedback.  Some people don't discover
this about Python until late in the game, and I think that's a
pity.  I like that Guido's tutorial starts with 'using Python
as a calculator'.

Seems to me the text editor in IDLE is no less intuitive
than Notepad, once one realizes its function.  I can
understand a newbie being confused about what it does and
what it's for.  But that's where a good tutorial comes in.
These things should simply be explained.

Kirby