Python 3 IDE for teaching [closed]

Answer 1

JetBrains PyCharm is terrific. Not free, though.

Answer 2

Komodo Edit meets most of your requirements (as others mentioned in the comments) and supports Python 3 from version 6:

• Open source and free.
• Cross platform (Windows and Linux, also Mac) ― built on XULRunner.
• Standard features: syntax highlighting, auto-indent, etc. ― Komodo has the best Python auto-completion I've seen; they'll do automatic type inference from variable assignments.
• Run button, rather than console where you have to type "python foo.py". ― Can be simply added.
• Context-aware help ― supported when you press ( plus it will do this nicely on objects that have been instantiated from other classes.
• Embedded Python shell ― The full Python shell integration is only in the commercial IDE, but you can easily hook up a shell into a command output window by adding a toolbox recipe for python -i.
• Built-in debugger ― Unfortunately not (but neither do lots of the light-weight IDEs recommended above) ― this is only in the commercial Komodo IDE. I'd recommend using Winpdb alongside Komodo Edit for development ― it's faster than the Komodo IDE debugger (and lots of other debuggers) in my experience. Whether this'll fly with high school students would be the question.
• Useless crud stripped ― Komodo's clearly got more stuff in it that IDLE so it depends how you see this. Auto-completion can be turned off.
• Lightweight for kids who go home to old PCs unable to run beefy IDEs such as Eclipse ― This may also be a downfall ― I'd say Komodo is less beefy than Eclipse though.

Extra things to consider:

• Komodo is great at web development: it supports nice syntax highlighting and code completion on embedded CSS inside HTML etc…
• Support for extensions (along the same lines as Firefox, plus the extensions can be written in Python) ― this could be useful if you need some tweaks to the UI etc for the courses.

Answer 3

Eclipse + pydev can do that. It's free. UI isn't very simple, but you have debugger, highlight, shell and completion.

UPD: Here is sample screenshot. It's pretty simple imo.
12-18 is more like teenager, not a kid, I'm sure that they fluent with much more complicated interfaces like facebook :)

Answer 4

IEP is another lightweight option that should meet all of your requirements.

It has similar goals to spyder (which is quite nice, and has been mentioned by a couple of other people) but is a bit more lightweight and does support python3.

It's worth taking a look at anyway...

Answer 5

It's Windows only, but the PythonWin IDE that comes with Mark Hammond's pywin32 package meets all your requirements including support for Python 3.1. Download it at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/files/

Answer 6

I have been hearing a lot of praises about Aptana Studio recently ( made by the coders of PyDev ).
http://aptana.com/products/studio3/download
Personally using Eclipse + PyDev and really recommend it.