Question

ok, so one of the thing i've noticed is that while watching the lecture and following along by editing the code exactly the same as the guy on the video...
i sometimes get errors like bad syntax or something like that, but it's nearly always associated with a blank space with no text in it at all.
other times it's giving me no response at all, and i end up having to close out python shell and restarting it before the .py file will run again. is this a known issue or should i uninstall/reinstall?

i know it's been asked before but is there a way to share my work and have others give input on it? i know it's open course so theres no grades but it'd be great to get feedback

Answer 1

Because Python relies on indentation to determine blocks of code, it can be picky. The indentation that you see on the screen actually doesn't show what's going on. Python will complain if one line of a block is indented 4 spaces and another is indented a tab with the tab stop set to 4. To make matters worse, IDLE silently converts your tabs to spaces when you save the file. That's the main reason that I don't like IDLE.

Answer 2

so it's an idle thing then... what about having to close python and reopen it in order to get the programs to actually work?

Answer 3

IDLE communicates with the shell through a socket. Sometimes it gets screwed up and you can actually have to reboot the computer to clear it.

IMO, an IDE for Python is overkill. You don't need to compile your programs, so the labor saving is minimal. I'd rather use my favorite text editors ( XCode, vi ) and set my files into a realistic setup to do my test runs, than use an IDE.

Answer 4

good idea, ty