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Frabato

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Registered: 2007-10-24

Posts: 267

simple IDE for python3 for beginners

Hi All,

My seven year old son is interested in learning python to write games and I found this ebook
http://inventwithpython.com/
which seems easy enough for him (and me to understand).
We started with geany but I was wondering if there might be a better IDE to start with and again, something simple, straightforward and easy to use because neither my son nor I, know a thing about programming.
Oh yes, and is anyone familiar with the ebook I mentioned above? Anyone have good or bad things to say about it or know of any other source materials that might be suitable for such a young beginner?

Thanks!

cookies

Member

Registered: 2013-01-17

Posts: 253

Re: simple IDE for python3 for beginners

Take a look at the python wiki and try a few IDEs and see if you can find something you like, http://wiki.python.org/moin/IntegratedD … vironments

ewaller

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From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 20,347

Re: simple IDE for python3 for beginners

Eric4

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AaronBP

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Registered: 2012-08-06

Posts: 149

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Re: simple IDE for python3 for beginners

Hmm... Well, no matter what IDE you use you're just going to be typing in a text editor and running commands anyway. IDEs are designed to have features for professionals, not really to make it easier for kids to learn programming. Something like Geany is fine. It's got a text editor and a shell, and that's really all that you need.

If you're looking for something to help teach kids programming concepts in an interactive way, there are a few solutions out there. I know Khan Academy has some stuff, though I don't know how good it is.

https://www.khanacademy.org/cs/

Note that any kind of programming is going to require some math, though nothing too complicated. Drawing in particular is going to require coordinates, which I don't think I understood at seven. Then again, I was always a little bit behind in the mathetematicals...

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McDoenerKing

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From: Germany

Registered: 2010-06-21

Posts: 59

Re: simple IDE for python3 for beginners

I started to learn programming with python several months ago and I found spyder IDE the most comfortable. Especially since it comes with style/code checkers and will alarm you about bad design/style choices. Many may say start in a simple text editor, but if your first few programs are way too hard/spaghetti coded, you get frustrated when you go back with something you newly learned and can't apply it to your old program, because you can't even read it anymore.

Invent with python is a good start into programming general. I read it and it covers all the basics. The book even has a follow up with pygame to learn even more.

Link: http://inventwithpython.com/makinggames.pdf

The books are python2 though, which isn't bad, but can confuse you at times when you try to run your game with "python xyz.py" and it returns bad syntax, although it runs fine from your ide. Oh and whatever IDE you pick set it to python2 for learning python with these books.

FreeTheBee

Member

Registered: 2011-01-02

Posts: 125

Re: simple IDE for python3 for beginners

Although not an IDE, ipython is perhaps interesting as well. It has a notebook option that gives you a notebook interface in a browser. It was aimed to be used with scipy I think, but I also find it very useful to try out snippets and such.

http://ipython.org/notebook.html

count0

Member

Registered: 2011-09-28

Posts: 20

Re: simple IDE for python3 for beginners

Have you checked out IDLE? It comes with python.

drcouzelis

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From: Connecticut, USA

Registered: 2009-11-09

Posts: 4,092

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Re: simple IDE for python3 for beginners

We started with geany but I was wondering if there might be a better IDE to start with and again, something simple, straightforward and easy to use because neither my son nor I, know a thing about programming.

I don't think you need an IDE. Python applications, especially for beginners, will all be a single text file.

There are three things you need for Python programming: a text editor (Gedit, Geany, Vim, Leafpad...), a way to view documentation (Web browser, ipython...), and a way to run your program (a terminal window...). If you can combine any of those things into a single application that's fine, but I don't thing it's necessary.

I consider myself an intermediate Python programmer. I tried switching to a Python IDE recently (called Ninja IDE) and haven't found any benefit in using it over a text editor, so I went back to just using Vim.

Frabato

Member

Registered: 2007-10-24

Posts: 267

Re: simple IDE for python3 for beginners

Thanks everyone, I'm starting to get a little perspective now.

The books are python2 though, which isn't bad, but can confuse you at times when you try to run your game with "python xyz.py" and it returns bad syntax, although it runs fine from your ide. Oh and whatever IDE you pick set it to python2 for learning python with these books.

The book has been updated to python3.

I know Khan Academy has some stuff, though I don't know how good it is.
https://www.khanacademy.org/cs/

Thanks, looks like a good resource.
Again, thanks to all as I really didn't even know the real function of an IDE was, there's plenty here to get us started.

Last edited by Frabato (2013-04-25 04:12:55)