[Pdxpw-staff] notes on editor choice

[Michelle Rowley]

I appreciated all the thoughtful responses to Kevin's original thoughtful post about editor choice for workshops. I agree that we should try something different for the next workshop.

I think Sublime Text 2 seems like a good choice, defaulting back to Notepad or TextEdit for systems that don't support it. It's got the dual benefits of being easy to use *and* having a following of actual developers who use it.

Anyone able to volunteer to write a rough draft of install steps for one or more operating systems? We can test them at hack night next week!

Thanks guys,
Michelle

On Jul 9, 2012, at 12:11 PM, Amy K. Farrell wrote:

> I don't have an opinion about any of these editors on their merits, as
> the only ones (on Kevin's list) that I've used are emacs and vi[m]. I
> agree that they aren't good choices for this purpose.
> 
> I did notice that Sublime Text 2 for Mac OS X requires OS X 10.6 or
> 10.7. We did have some students with older versions of Mac OS X, didn't
> we? I don't think that's necessarily a strike against it; just something
> to be aware of. We might list "supported configurations" (primarily OS
> and version) for the class and encourage people to contact us if they
> have something different.
> 
> I like the idea of getting a "site license" for classes, even though the
> evaluation license would probably suffice. I doubt that such a license
> would cover users once they left the class (maybe it would be
> time-limited?), but the single-user license fee doesn't strike me as
> unreasonable for someone who gets into programming and decides she
> really likes the editor.
> 
> - Amy
> 
> On 07/08/2012 11:15 AM, Selena Deckelmann wrote:
>> Re: licensing costs -- this is the type of thing that we could
>> fundraise for, IMO. Given that we're also engaging in a non-profit
>> endeavor, with some careful maneuvering I'll bet that we could get a
>> substantial discount for a "site license" for the tool.
>> 
>> I know one issue in the past has been a desire for using FOSS tools.
>> But our use of CodingBat sort of throws all that out the window, IMO.
>> 
>> Let's use the best tool for the job! :)
>> 
>> -selena
>> 
>> On Sun, Jul 8, 2012 at 10:42 AM, Emily Strickland <emily at zubon.org> wrote:
>>> I was just reading this post and the comments espousing IDLE. I hope it's
>>> fine if I continue the discussion in this thread among us staffers.
>>> 
>>> I hate IDLE. I cannot imagine any dev candidate where I work saying they use
>>> or ever used IDLE. Probably the reason for my especial hate was, when my
>>> friend Shawna was picking up Python, IDLE threw her for a loop. It has a
>>> quite unintuitive interface. I had to actually show her (in a menu) how to
>>> get to an editor rather than an interactive console.
>>> 
>>> I feel Sublime Text 2 is the best bet. Yes, it costs, but it seriously
>>> *only* nags occasionally, in perpetuity (I still haven't paid for it), and
>>> it's amazing and a respectable, beautiful tool that works identically
>>> cross-platform.
>>> 
>>> I'd be interested in hearing reasons we shouldn't recommend this awesome
>>> tool. It comes even with the cachet of being used by *real devs*. We're not
>>> just suggesting a text editor in recommending Sublime; we're passing along a
>>> part of dev culture.
>>> 
>>> On Thursday, 5 July 2012 at 21:07 , Kevin Turner wrote:
>>> 
>>> I wrote down some of our concerns about Python editors, and some
>>> evaluation of the options available: http://goo.gl/SQ6Hk
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> 
>>> 
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>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
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---
Michelle Rowley
@pythonchelle
http://www.meetup.com/pdxpython