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These are great questions... briefly: * Licensing - if you use one of the installers (for OSX or Windows) you're presented with the GPL3 as part of the install
by ntoll 8y ago
These are great questions... briefly:
* Licensing - if you use one of the installers (for OSX or Windows) you're presented with the GPL3 as part of the installation process.
* Mac OSX package (and to the same extent, the Windows installer) - Mu comes with everything bundled in so you don't have to mess around installing a bunch of stuff to make it work. We did it this way after asking for feedback from school network administrators who always said some variation of "make my life as simple as possible". Mu is only just less than 4k lines of Python so, you're right in thinking that the rest of the installer is Qt and a bunch of other stuff (like Tk/tkinter, needed for Python's turtle module to work, something many teachers have told us they need). We also bundle PyGame, iPython, Matplotlib, Numpy etc etc... so they're just there by default if you simply install Mu. In this sense, Mu is a sort of "instant Python for education" (just add learners). ;-)
* Bundling - I'm happy for Mu to be bundled if this were useful to another project although I guess this depends upon what use case you're thinking of. For example, Mu is already "bundled" (in a sense) in Raspbian as a recommended package. If in doubt, just reach out.
- japhyr 8y agoAs an educator, I appreciate the decision to bundle libraries such as PyGame, Matplotlib, etc with the editor. Although it's important for new coders to learn how to install libraries, it doesn't need to be one of the first things they learn. It's really nice to be able to install an editor, show students a few lines of code, and have it do something more than just print some text to a terminal. (Although, for the record, printing text to a terminal is still immensely satisfying to many new programmers. It makes them feel like they're really programming.) I've been teaching programming off and on for many years, and I'm teaching another intro course this fall. I can't wait to give Mu a try with students. Thanks for all your hard work, and the clarity of thinking that's gone into this project.
- ntoll 8y agoThank you!
- int_19h 8y agoIt's great to see a development tool with this take in the Python ecosystem! I always thought that things like turtle are underappreciated for educational purposes, and having them out of the box in the standard library is a point in favor of Python as a great teaching language. But you took this to 11. :)