[Idle-dev] IDLE in UK Schools

Thu Aug 6 12:22:50 CEST 2015

Oh dear,

I have been away for a day celebrating my Mum’s 60th anniversary and so not been able to contribute further. I have followed the discussions with interest and been very excited by them. The enthusiasm and hard work that has gone into making such a useful tool was refreshing and all open source. I was a little embarrassed to be someone suggesting things and yet not having the technical skills to help so “listened” for a while.

There is so much enthusiasm for Python and Computer Science in UK schools that I think this is very important. I started bebras.uk <http://bebras.uk/> two years ago and we got 21,000 students in our first year, the next 40,000. Success of Computing in the UK is in no way certain as we are chronically short of trained teachers but there is still a momentum.

I personally feel there is no real conflict between the different views expressed in the last two days. I believe it would be fantastic if we can re-think how to make IDLE the most user friendly IDE for beginners and I would add some cosmetic differences (the ttk stuff looks like it would be a big help in improving the professional look). However I would not remove anything! I had in mind a “Workspace” drop down menu where users call up different facilities. The basics being "script mode" (the shell) and “script mode”. I would also add at least a “Turtle" arrangement and a “Professional” set-up. Would hope that if this is done well, fans of IDLE will be pleased, students and teachers would be pleased AND more professionals would stick with it too - everyone wants an IDE that does not distract from writing code and lets you get on with what you want intuitively. Kids want an IDE that they can grow with so providing pro-features that can be selected as their skills develop is ideal.

I have some of my own ideas that I have not presented here as I did not want to be too pushy having just joined this group, and as I said I probably do not have the skill to help out. However, I originally was not able to go to PyCon UK this year (in September) but with some encouragement from you guys will try and cadge a late ticket and see if I can drum up some feedback, support, talent and possibly even money if it is required. PyCon UK has a dedicated Education track which this year is being run by the Raspberry Pi foundation. They and ARM sponsor the Bebras comp which I run (now in partnership with Oxford Uni). I am name dropping to show there are some potential powerful advocates with many skills in the UK. I also have friendly contacts in Microsoft and Google. All these people and organisations want to make sure the UK and ultimately the rest of the world have a fantastic CS programme with the best of tools. They are also great fans of Python 3 as an education tool.

I am off on holiday for a week today but will continue to watch my emails and try to formulate some ideas I am comfortable to share.

Best wishes
Chris

> On 6 Aug 2015, at 10:02, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> 
> I am not interested in this discussion. You all can do what you want.
> 
> On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 11:30 PM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu <mailto:tjreedy at udel.edu>> wrote:
> On 8/5/2015 5:55 AM, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 4:43 AM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu <mailto:tjreedy at udel.edu>
> <mailto:tjreedy at udel.edu <mailto:tjreedy at udel.edu>>> wrote:
> 
>     As a user of Idle for several years, and not a beginner, I disagree
>     with 'only'.  That aside, I consider it unnecessary and diversionary
>     from the numerous known issues that will benefit *everyone*.
> 
> The core of this comment is "unnecessary and diversionary ...".
> 
> As for 'unnecessary', what does adding 'only' add to the discussion? Does that mean that we should reject features that also benefit non-beginners? If not, what does it mean?  What extra design guidance does it add?
> 
> As for 'divisionary', see, besides the above, my questions that follow the 'PyCharm' quote.
> 
> Please note that I volunteer my time to improve Idle *because* it is primarily used by students and secondarily, perhaps, by others who are not professional programmers.
> 
> I was worried that you'd respond like this. *No* change to IDLE will
> benefit *everyone*,
> 
> Please give me the benefit of the doubt and assume that I am saying something sensible. By 'everyone', I mean "everyone who uses Idle" and in relation to a particular issue, 'everyone who use the feature in question' and in relation of OS-specific issues, 'everyone using that OS'.  With those meanings, my statement is reasonably true.
> 
> > for the simple reason that few people outside the
> > (non-higher) educational field use it.
> 
> Bruce already covered colleges.
> 
> There are also post-beginners, but not professional programmers, like my daughter, who are so far happy with Idle and do not yet need the advanced features of other Python shells.
> 
> And there are Windows users.  Windows Command Prompt is awful. Interactive Python in Command Prompt suffers its sins. I believe most Windows users who try Idle Shell find it to be a better experience. One of the other core devs once (blushingly) admitted on pydev to using Shell on Windows for this reason.
> 
> > IDLE should not try to compete with things like PyCharm ...
> 
> What does this mean in terms of Idle design decisions?  Can you give me examples of what you think should not be added?
> 
> You and Kurt each have twice given general advice that Idle should be kept 'simple' and not have 'advanced' features added.  But I have trouble turning that general advice into concrete decision making.  Are there any enhancement requests on the tracker you would reject as too complex or advanced?  (To make checking easy, I can send or post a complete, categorized list.)
> 
> A couple of the features at the end of Al's list strike me as the sort of things you are saying not to do in the advice above.  Do you agree?
> 
> In particular, consider post-installation switchable multiple language support. That would, in general, be of most benefit to the youngest beginners.  It is also a rare and rather advanced feature, and complex not only in terms of the programming, but in the need for coordination with an internationalization group separate from Idle maintainers themselves.  Should we avoid competing with more advanced programs and leave this out?
> 
> > , nor with the Emacs/Vim world (and I consider most every text editor > professional coders like to use these days on Linux/Mac/Windows to be > in that world, from Sublime Text to Atom).
> 
> Notepad++ had been recommend as a multiple (50) programming language editor for Windows on python-list.  I have also seen it mentioned on Stackoverflow.
> 
> > IDLE's one redeeming feature is that it's bundled with Python,
> 
> As installed, Idle
> 1. Colorizes Python code
> 2. Converts \t to '    '
> 3. Saves in utf-8 (3.x)
> 4. Checks syntax before running and marks the location of error in the editor
> 5. Runs the file in -i mode
> 6. Displays tracebacks and print output in a window with normal cut and paste
> 7. and can jump to the error line of any file in tracebacks
> 8. ...
> 
> As installed, Notepad++ does 1.  With some searching through the extensive settings menus, one of which is not obvious, it can do 2, 3, and 5. By running in Idle or another external, installed program instead of command prompt, it can get 6.  As far as I know, it can never do 4, or 7 in the sense of jumping back to Notepad++.  With respect to this 7 points, Idle is the better choice for developing Idle programs.
> 
> I presume that some of the other programs you mention match Idle in features 4 and 7, which I find *very* useful. But I think you have an overly narrow view of the virtues of the program you help create ;-).
> 
> And to repeat, Idle makes the interactive mode of Python, as installed, a joy rather than barely tolerable. If it were removed, another replacement for command prompt should be found.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Terry Jan Reedy
> 
> 
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> 
> 
> -- 
> --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido <http://python.org/~guido>)
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