71–80 of 107 posts
It is so simple, approachable, and un-intimidating. There is really no learning curve. Just type something and click run.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine telling the students to use vim if they have never used it before. In theory, one only needs to know a few things to edit: - type vi to start editing - there are two modes: 'i' to start insert mode, to leave it for normal mode - in insert mode, what you type is entered as you type - in normal mode, use the cursor keys to move around - in normal mode, type 'x' to delete the character under the cursor - type :w…
> Imagine telling the students to use vim I can hardly imagine that. They would hate me for wasting their time they could use to learn something practical. To me Vim seems a crazy alien technology of particularly questionable usefulness (even for a keyboard-centric user), only suitable for fun and for looking cool. Unlike PyCharm or Visual Studio, Vim doesn't just have unintuitive features available to whoever choose…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Imagine telling the students to use vim I can hardly imagine that. They would hate me for wasting their time they could use to learn something practical. To me Vim seems a crazy alien technology of particularly questionable usefulness (even for a keyboard-centric user), only suitable for fun and for looking cool. Unlike PyCharm or Visual Studio, Vim doesn't just have unintuitive features available to whoever choose…
> I can hardly imagine that. They would hate me for wasting their time they could use to learn something practical. To me Vim seems a crazy alien technology of particularly questionable usefulness (even for a keyboard-centric user) I know tons of developers and system administrators that use vim on a daily basis (that includes me). While I agree that I would not necessarily recommend it for a beginning student, it is…
That's why I wrote "To me Vim seems...". Beyond the fact it's impossible to start using it right away without instruction, everything else is subjective and context-dependent.
> My experience is that the time I spent learning it was well worth the investment.
How? I tried. But I still can't see how its key shortctus are better than the common ones (i.e. how Esc,Shift+G (yes, I just googled it) is better than Ctrl+End) and how its power in applying bulk edits to many places at once can make me more productive (it would mean I write redundant code if it could). What other things does Vim have which other editors/ides don't? I also find coding without JetBrains-level smart code completion a waste of time.
I recommend this to my students frequently. I teach an intro to programming class to college students who have no experience. Inevitably, some try to use PyCharm and they just get lost in it! I tell them it's like learning to drive in an 18 wheeler with a manual transmission. Thonny is very much the Toyota Corolla of IDEs and it's perfect for beginners. The debugger and variable pane really help beginners figure out…
I recommend Geany[1] to students learning Java for the same reason. Many students used to try to use Eclipse, but would get bogged down in Eclipse' notion of a "project" and other details that were unrelated to the simple tasks they were trying to do. Geany is much easier for them to get started with, and still provides a graphical way to run and debug code. [1] https://www.geany.org/
They're currently using Mu (https://codewith.mu/) which has similar goals (very streamlined IDE aimed at kids and beginners).
I recommend this to my students frequently. I teach an intro to programming class to college students who have no experience. Inevitably, some try to use PyCharm and they just get lost in it! I tell them it's like learning to drive in an 18 wheeler with a manual transmission. Thonny is very much the Toyota Corolla of IDEs and it's perfect for beginners. The debugger and variable pane really help beginners figure out…
I recommend Geany[1] to students learning Java for the same reason. Many students used to try to use Eclipse, but would get bogged down in Eclipse' notion of a "project" and other details that were unrelated to the simple tasks they were trying to do. Geany is much easier for them to get started with, and still provides a graphical way to run and debug code. [1] https://www.geany.org/
bpython is the friendly alternative to ipython.
I've used this in the past with my son to teach him simple stuff. Would be nice if it somehow had integrated docs though, at which point it would be roughly up to speed with QuickBasic in the 80s.