[Tutor] Recommendations for best tool to write/run Python

[Ben Finney]

Ben Finney <ben+python at benfinney.id.au> writes:

> In that case, my recommendation is to learn a good programmer's
> editor, and let your students gain exposure to that.
>
> Emacs and Vim are the unchallenged masters here […]
>
> They aren't a small investment, though. […] it may be too much to
> confront a middle-school student in limited class time. Maybe let the
> class know they exist, at least.
>
> Short of those, I'd still recommend a community-owned, free-software,
> highly flexible programmer's editor.

I have never used Atom <URL:https://atom.io/>, but it meets the criteria
I would recommend. It is free software, community owned, has support for
a broad variety of contemporary editing tasks, is cross-platform.

On top of that it has advantages over Vim and Emacs: its terminology
matches what today's computer users expect; it is written in and
extensible with a commonly-used programming language; it UI is designed
to match contemporary user expectations.

The few reservations I have – it is not yet mature enough to have
support for pretty much every editing tasks; it does not appear to have
a text console mode (for use across an SSH link); it is presently
dominated by a single corporation – should not stop you from presenting
it to your students as a fine programmer's editor for their future.

-- 
 \      “Not using Microsoft products is like being a non-smoker 40 or |
  `\     50 years ago: You can choose not to smoke, yourself, but it's |
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Ben Finney