[Edu-sig] The right learning environment

[Arthur Siegel]

I will be guilty of selectively presenting evidence that supports my
intuition/position/experience on learning environments.

The book "Beginning ASP.NET using C#" (Wrox) considers its audience:

"You're a beginner to programming and you've chosen ASP.NET as the
technology with which to get started."

The recommended coding environment:

"We strongly suggest (and will assume throughout) that you use Notepad to
code all examples in this book, since it will always do precisely what you
ask it to and no more."

In my opinion, and from my experience, they are suggesting something wise.

Not taking gratuitous pot-shots at others efforts - it is a simple fact that
before I came to Python I had downloaded and tried to get started with Dr.
Scheme.  The fact that I could not  (remember I'm a rank beginner)
understand what role the environment was playing - the fact that it was all
seemed quite opaque - was something I could not get past. It was counter to
the reasons I was motivated to try to learn programming in the first place.
Full transparency was a requirement, at least for myself.

I ended up with Python and a little more fancy Notepad -
a Windows shareware text editor.

*No* learning environment is the best learning environment.
Which I would only modify to the extent that I would say that the Python
interactive prompt brings transparency to a new  level - and is very much
something that can and should be taken advantage of  for learning.

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