On 13 November 2017 at 04:51, Antoine Pitrou <solip...@pitrou.net> wrote: > On Sun, 12 Nov 2017 23:18:26 +1000 > Nick Coghlan <ncogh...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> We haven't forgotten our early years - we've just spent years (both >> individually and collectively) working on the problem of helping >> people get started with software development, and thus have a very >> good idea as to what *doesn't* work, as well as what *does* work. >> >> The latter list is currently fairly short: >> >> * having a friend or colleague walk them through it >> * "Install Parties", like those Django Girls runs (i.e. running a >> pre-tutorial event, specifically focused on getting a working >> environment set up) >> * highly prescriptive learning environments, whether online ones (like >> Grok Learning, trinket.io, PythonAnywhere, etc), or locally installed >> ones (like PyCharm Educational Edition, the Anaconda distribution, >> etc) > > Not wanting to nitpick, but I don't think the Anaconda distribution is > "highly prescriptive". It's a software distribution with scientific > computing as its main focus, but perfectly usable for ordinary Python > programming. It's not more prescriptive than Debian, which by its > philosophy is directed primarily towards sysadmin crowds but also used > by some people on their personal desktops.
I meant prescriptive in the sense of "Here's how to get the binaries and manage upgrades". The non-prescriptive alternative is "Use any Python binary you like, and we'll try to adjust to that". The latter can potentially work given sufficiently experienced instructors (or a suitable mix of instructors with knowledge of different platforms), but it's not easy. (The downside of this being that prescriptive environments for particular workshops is one of the most common ways for beginners to end up with multiple versions of Python installed: whatever they found on their own, plus the version their workshop instructors told them to use). > Also, you can create custom Anaconda-like distributions to provide the > desired environment to your students in an executable installer (*). > I'm not sure how usable that option is, but it definitely exists, is > open source and cross-platform. > > (*) https://github.com/conda/constructor Oh, cool - I didn't know about that. Yeah, that could definitely provide an interesting middle ground between "Choose your own adventure" and "Here's the entire scientific Python stack". Cheers, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | ncogh...@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list Python-ideas@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
