[Pdxpw-staff] install instructions for Sublime Text 2

[Kevin Turner]

On Fri, Jul 13, 2012, at 09:50 AM, Emily Strickland wrote:

Personally I'd rather they see the errors from Python itself at
the command line.  [...] In my mind, the only reason we're not
using, say, Notepad, is that we want a very consistent
cross-platform experience.


Ah, okay, there's the crux of it.  You want to start with the
basics, whereas I think we can start with tools that improve on
the basics.

I don't know which works better; it's quite possible I am biased
by the lure of shiny gizmos.  This is where I'd love to see case
studies (we're certainly not the first people to teach
programming) or have the input of our educational advisor Scott .

What's our goal here? To introduce novices to programming? Or
introduce techies to Python (as a culture, a way of programming,
a way of approaching problems, etc)? I find both goals
compelling, but we only have time and resources for one.


Important question, for sure.  I think, in the context of a
program run by the Portland Python User Group, where we follow up
the class by saying "come to meetup.com/pdxpython project night!"
and say "the great thing about Python is the community," we have
to keep the culture and community in mind.

And while I do agree with part of your question here (yes, it's
possible to use Python as a demonstration language to teach
something about programming without getting into
Python-the-community), I more skeptical of the novices/techies
distinction you appear to be drawing.  That is, I agree there are
different audiences with different levels of technical
background, but I think you can work with either goal for each
audience.
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