Tools for writing Python An Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is software that integrates tools for programming. As we’ve seen, for Code Club, the basic tools we need for kids to program in Python are (assuming we’ve install Python): a Python shell to try out commands with immediate feedback an editor, with a simple interface, to create Python scripts containing our code an environment to run our scripts that gives us errors when we make mistakes Other features, I see as optional, but useful include:

I used to scribble a ton of stuff in the back of one of my old Commodore64 manuals. Whenever I’d find something cool in a magazine or book, or later, text files, I’d scrawl it in. There was something about it being a bit messy that made it easier to remember. These days, there’s a ton of different ways to do that online or in files, but most smart coders I know just go and look up their own code.

So going from visual programming like Scratch to a text-based language can intially seem a bit lame. Yep, that makes sense to me. We’ve just gone from something that lets us drag blocks into a window with spinning monkeys and bouncing balls, to…typing words, that makes a few words come up on the screen, or draws a boring star. The other thing that made this change kind of suck, is that things don’t work nearly as easily as Scratch does, at first.