Python education survey

[Nathan Rice]

On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 9:52 AM, Rick Johnson
<rantingrickjohnson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 25, 9:27 pm, Chris Angelico <ros... at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 4:44 AM, Rick Johnson
>> > [...]
>> Conversely, why write an IDE into IDLE when perfectly-good IDEs
>> already exist? I don't use IDLE for development per se; it's for
>> interactive Python execution, but not editing of source files.
>
> I believe the answer is two fold:
>
> 1. Including an IDE like IDLE into the Python distro helps noobs to
> get started quickly without needing to traverse a gauntlet of unknown
> IDEs on their own. If later they find something that they feel is more
> appropriate; so be it.
>
> 2. (and most important to me... IDLE is written in Python using the
> Tkinter GUI (which ships with python also). Therefore, the source code
> for IDLE can be a GREAT teaching resource for how to write
> professional Tkinter applications. I KNOW THE CURRENT SOURCE SUCKS!
> However, we could change that.
>
> So, with those points being covered, i believe IDLE is very important
> to the Python community and could be useful to more people IF we clean
> it up a bit. It's really a great little IDE with even greater
> potential. If Guido would just say something (or at least some of the
> top Pythionistas (Hettinger i am looking at you!)) this community
> might work together to fix this problem.

Not everyone who has Python installed wants to learn the language.  I
do think that a "learning" distro that has a lot of core tools
pre-installed, and ships with some tutorials, would be a decent idea.
Sort of like Enthought for new users :)  I don't feel IDLE is worth
salvaging though.

Nathan