Neat project! Do we have an actual UX or design person in the group? Because if we don't, getting one may help us frame some of these questions.
On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 9:32 AM, Douglas S. Blank <[email protected]> wrote: >> Thank you, Doug! >> >> Is there any sort of design documentation around IDLE? Because that >> might be a great place to start. Perhaps there are a few simple things >> we can tweak that will make the shell more shell-like, including key >> bindings and more color schemes (a suggestion someone else made that I >> love). I'd love to see more people talking about IDLE in a positive >> way. >> >> Katie > > You're welcome! And to keep the ball rolling on IDLE design, I'll admit > that I have been working on an IDLE-inspired IDE. Here is a screenshot: > > http://calicoproject.org/Image:CalicoWindow.gif > > (Calico isn't completely compatible with regular, old Python, as the goals > of the system are a little different than IDLE's. For example, Calico > supports a number of other languages in the Shell, including Scheme, > Basic, Logo, and allows the languages to interoperate.) > > I mention this only because we have wrestled with the question: what would > be better than IDLE?, and this is what we came up with so far. It has > tabs, and a single window; It doesn't run Python in a separate process; > color syntax highlighting; some support for tab-completion. > > But we believe in the IDLE Philosophy... our version: keep it simple, but > allow it to "scale-up pedagogically". (But we do have built-in chat, and > many other education-only features, so it isn't as simple as IDLE). > > -Doug > > >> On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 8:35 AM, Douglas S. Blank >> <[email protected]> wrote: >>> Hello everyone! >>> >>> As someone who cares deeply both about open source software and getting >>> more diverse groups of people into computing, I appreciate the details >>> of >>> unfolding story. First, I think that we call all agree on a few points: >>> >>> * all software can be made better >>> * open source software is put together by volunteers >>> * there aren't enough female voices in this community >>> * diversity is a good thing---it allows us to see issues from other >>> perspectives >>> * we all want a good IDE for Python >>> >>> If I can jump in, I'd like to suggest that we all now work on a way >>> forward. >>> >>> 1. Are IDLE sources on github? That would make it easy to fork and fix. >>> 2. Perhaps IDLE could use a steering committee, composed of people from >>> all walks of life >>> 3. Perhaps IDLE will not satisfy all these groups of users. What then? >>> Options? Let 1000 IDLE's bloom? >>> 4. Is the design of IDLE correct? Or is a reboot in order? >>> >>> I very much appreciate everyone's honest discussion so far, and hope >>> that >>> we can work out the issues---a similar situation occurred at PyCon >>> (perhaps not ironically) [1], but I hope that we can work out the >>> problems >>> in a constructive way here. >>> >>> Thanks! >>> >>> -Doug >>> >>> [1] - >>> http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/21/breaking-adria-richards-fired-by-sendgrid-for-outting-developers-on-twitter/ >>> >>> -- >>> Douglas S. Blank >>> Associate Professor, Computer Science, Bryn Mawr College >>> http://cs.brynmawr.edu/~dblank (610)526-6501 >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> IDLE-dev mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/idle-dev >> _______________________________________________ IDLE-dev mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/idle-dev
