Re: [Edu-sig] more on digital math...
kirby urner schrieb: --... Two Python specific feedbacks from that meeting: A. Another Title One of the teachers is using this book, which was assigned to him (he didn't choose it): Python Programming in Context by Miller and Ranum: http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157...@n00/3800868585/ http://www.amazon.com/Python-Programming-Context-Bradley-Miller/dp/0763746029/ ... There's a lot of turtle stuff in the above title, but I'm not sure to what extent, if any, it works of Gregor's version. Programming in Context uses cturtle, a slightly augmented version of an early version of my xturtle module. The additions proposed by Brad Miller have found their way into turtle.py. So turtle.py has definitely the full functionality needed in the book. However there have been made some changes in the naming of certain functions/methods in order that turtle.py complies with the naming conventions for modules of the standard library, e. g. onClick - onclick and things like this. Anyway it should not only be possible but also very easy to adapt the programs of the book to run with turtle.py The book has an appendix with a description of the API of cturtle, which can easily compared with Python's docs for the turtle module to find out which are the differences. Regards, Gregor ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] more on digital math...
kirby urner wrote: ... Another piece of feedback came from this PSU professor who really likes the language but found IDLE to be almost a show stopper on her Mac, as it'd crash and then not reboot because of some socket error. I mentioned killing zombie snakes in the task manager on Windows but she assured me this wasn't the problem, plus her students reported the same thing. Her impression was IDLE is not supported and that there's no one to turn to when your IDLE is crashing. I said I'd look into this for her. I've not had this specific problem, though I do need to kill zombie snakes on occasion. My hope is tat with Snow Leopard we get to a more stable Tkinter, and because of that, a more stable Idle on OSX. I've no inside knowledge about whether that will come true, but I'm hoping the Aqua vesion of Tk will do the trick. I see a little movement of fixes connected to Idle (as in I finally got a note from someone about an old Idle Patch of mine), so there is definitely some reason to hope. If Tk is not stable, there is no hope for Idle. If Tk gets stable, I think we ought to be able to repair the Idle bugs. I personally think Idle is crucial to learning Python easily. If Idle does wind up broken, perhaps the better educational scroungers could rustle up a few shekels or skilled software hors to fix it. I'd make sure they know about numpy and/or scipy as well, because having easy matrix calculations is a _big_ win as you get into 3-D calculations. --Scott David Daniels scott.dani...@acm.org ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
Re: [Edu-sig] more on digital math...
On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 3:40 PM, Scott David Danielsscott.dani...@acm.org wrote: kirby urner wrote: ... Another piece of feedback came from this PSU professor who really likes the language but found IDLE to be almost a show stopper on her Mac, as it'd crash and then not reboot because of some socket error. I mentioned killing zombie snakes in the task manager on Windows but she assured me this wasn't the problem, plus her students reported the same thing. Her impression was IDLE is not supported and that there's no one to turn to when your IDLE is crashing. I said I'd look into this for her. I've not had this specific problem, though I do need to kill zombie snakes on occasion. My hope is tat with Snow Leopard we get to a more stable Tkinter, and because of that, a more stable Idle on OSX. I've no inside knowledge about whether that will come true, but I'm hoping the Aqua vesion of Tk will do the trick. I see a little movement of fixes connected to Idle (as in I finally got a note from someone about an old Idle Patch of mine), so there is definitely some reason to hope. If Tk is not stable, there is no hope for Idle. If Tk gets stable, I think we ought to be able to repair the Idle bugs. Do we think of Tk as being stable on Windows and/or Linux? We do yes? This might be another argument for steering clear of over-priced Cadillac OS with too many bells and whistles. I know blaming Apple isn't popular, but if learning Python easily is really that important, then maybe school districts will think twice about paying that much for something that's unsupportive of Tk. Of course this doesn't fix the problem of not being able to run another Tk process within IDLE that easily, i.e. the old Tk in Tk problem. We need to teach how to drop into the shell. I was thinking Wing IDE 101, a free version of Wing, might be the answer. Or Eclipse? IDLE is a great tool, but has some problems. IPython... Going with wxPython e.g Pyshell might be the way to go, but I'm not sure Patrick is interested in those any more, or what the levels of problem might be with PyCrust on a Mac... I have very limited experience with Macs except I admire them from afar. http://www.wingware.com/wingide-101 I personally think Idle is crucial to learning Python easily. If Idle does wind up broken, perhaps the better educational scroungers could rustle up a few shekels or skilled software hors to fix it. I've always thought so too. So easy and it's there right out of the box. I'd make sure they know about numpy and/or scipy as well, because having easy matrix calculations is a _big_ win as you get into 3-D calculations. True. Pygeo depends on these features, and VPython, as a 3D projective geometry application. Kirby --Scott David Daniels scott.dani...@acm.org ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig ___ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
