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

[Thomas C. Hicks]

Matt,

As a physician myself just getting into the world of teaching computer 
programming I would be very interested to know what you teach to the 
doctors.  Feel free to reply off list, would love to discuss this!

===============
Thomas C. Hicks, MD, MPH
Training Manager
Gansu Gateway, Lanzhou, Gansu

On 03/03/2016 05:25 AM, Matt Williams wrote:
> I teach an introductory programming course to medical students (and a few
> doctors).
>
> I would look at Sublime Text 2 if one Windows/ Mac. Has a 'nag' screen to
> remind you to buy, but feels simple enough when you start it.
>
> M
>
> On Wed, 2 Mar 2016 19:50 Ben Finney, <ben+python at benfinney.id.au> wrote:
>
>> Lisa Hasler Waters <lwaters at flinthill.org> writes:
>>
>>> Ben, in terms of time for learning curve, I suppose we do have some
>>> limitations as we are up against school schedules. However, if it is
>>> something I could learn in a reasonable time that I could then more
>>> quickly walk my students through then I'd be up for the challenge!
>> 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; community-owned,
>> free-software, cross-platform, mature and highly flexible with support
>> for a huge range of editing tasks. Learning either of those will reward
>> the student with a tool they can use broadly throughout whatever
>> computing career they choose.
>>
>> They aren't a small investment, though. That “mature” comes at the cost
>> of an entire ecosystem that evolved in decades past; concepts and
>> commands are idiosynratic in each of them. It is highly profitable for
>> any programmer to learn at least one of Emacs or Vim to competence, but
>> 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. If you're on GNU+Linux, use the
>> Kate or GEdit editors; they integrate very nicely with the default
>> desktop environment and are well-maintained broadly applicable text
>> editors. GEdit in particular has good Python support.
>>
>> I would recommend staying away from any language-specific IDE. Teaching
>> its idiosyncracies will still be a large time investment, but will not
>> be worth it IMO because the tool is so limited in scope. Better to teach
>> a powerfuly general-purpose programmer's editor, and use the operating
>> system's facilities for managing files and processes.
>>
>> --
>>   \        “Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it |
>>    `\     has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has |
>> _o__)            been playful, rebellious, and immature.” —Tom Robbins |
>> Ben Finney
>>
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