[Tutor] Re: [Edu-sig] RE: [Idle-dev] IDLE's save-before-runrequirement

[Patrick K. O'Brien]

Well said. I agree with all your suggestions and opinions, especially on
getting agreement on where we are going. I probably jumped the gun a bit by
suggesting a direction that might not be where everyone else wants to go.
Your take on the situation is much appreciated.

---
Patrick K. O'Brien
Orbtech
"I am, therefore I think."

-----Original Message-----
From: idle-dev-admin@python.org [mailto:idle-dev-admin@python.org]On Behalf
Of Kevin Ollivier
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2001 7:49 PM
To: idle-dev@python.org; Python Edu SIG; Python Tutor
Subject: Re: [Tutor] Re: [Edu-sig] RE: [Idle-dev] IDLE's
save-before-runrequirement

Hi everyone,

I agree that it is a (ahem!) darn good question. =) And the issue Patrick
brought up about the many IDE projects "re-inventing the wheel" is a great
one as well. One trend I see with open source development is that there are
generally many projects being built to solve the same problem, but doing so
in slightly different ways. So there is no doubt that there is a lot of
'duplicate' code being written out there, and I feel the various IDE
developers out there should really work out some common standards. Of course
the issue with open source projects at least is that most of them are built
"to scratch an itch", so to speak, so the programmer is focused on meeting
his/her needs and issues like compatibility are not often addressed.

With regards to IDLE, if I may make a suggestion, I think before we decide
on how IDLE is to get where it is going, we should first decide on where it
is going. What features should IDLE have? What is the "vision" for IDLE?
Will it become a power-IDE with features galore attempting to replace the
IDEs out there, or stay clean and simple, like Python itself? Should it be
Win/Mac/Linux compatible in one package, or is it OK that the Mac
implementation is different? And to pose a question that was brought up on
the Edu-sig list last weekend: Should there be "teaching" features built
into IDLE to help beginners learn the language? (i.e. IDLE, in "training
mode", would pose programming problems and point out mistakes) More
importantly, who's going do do all this work?? =)

As a stray thought, how easy would it be to have some of these features
added "dynamically"? In other words, make features like the color coding and
code-folding, or even interactive training, into modules that could be
imported by the user. That sort of thing. I think Patrick touched upon this
in his earlier message. How much work would this be? Or has this sort of
thing already been done?

My two cents? I think it would be really cool to advance IDLE to have a
built-in "training mode" so that everything you need to get up and running
with Python comes "in the box". In a way, the CP4E and IDLE projects could
become one and the same! (OK, so maybe this is just a dream, but it's a nice
one!) Making a Win/Mac/Linux version seems like a good idea, but I think it
depends on how much work it is, or realistically how much work will be put
into future versions. The features of the editor itself don't seem to bad
too me personally. After playing with a lot of "full-featured" IDEs, I
settled with a text editor. (Embarrassingly enough, I did not realize that
IDLE was also a script editor - I thought it was only a interpreter!) I
found the other IDEs to be big and bulky, and the bigger they were, the more
bugs and stability problems they had. Of course, I'm on Windows too, so
there are other factors there... =)

What do others think? I hope I've not gotten on a soapbox and babbled here.
I do have a tendency to do that on occasion... <AHEM!> I'm actually new to
all this open-source, mailing list stuff so if I'm breaking etiquette rules
or something feel free to tell me! ^_^;

Thanks for listening!

Kevin Ollivier