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swcarpentry / python-novice-gapminder

Plotting and Programming in Python
http://swcarpentry.github.io/python-novice-gapminder/
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Jupyter is not the only way to run python #539

Closed jatonline closed 3 years ago

jatonline commented 3 years ago

In recent (non-Carpentry) Python courses, we have come across learners that have experience with Python and using JupyterLab or Jupyter Notebooks, however are unaware that you can just run a Python script from the command line. We have observed that this has led to some confusion when they've been working with others who use script files.

I'm not for a second suggesting changing the way the lessons operate, as JupyterLab is definitely great for teaching (and in any case, this matter has been discussed before in #15). However, I wonder whether it would be helpful to introduce a little earlier in the lesson that you can run Python in lots of different ways, either directly from a command line, or through Jupyter, and we are going to use Jupyter for the lesson.

This is already mentioned on line 210 of the first episode (https://github.com/swcarpentry/python-novice-gapminder/blame/59d5eeec65a91143e74910d39e7a88e99219de41/_episodes/01-run-quit.md#L210), however given that the question the episode is answering is "How can I run Python programs?" and it jumps straight into "Getting Started with JupyterLab", I wonder whether this could easily be missed.

Would the lesson maintainers be open to a small PR to add a short paragraph at the top of the episode that makes this distinction earlier, or do you think that this would overcomplicate things?

alee commented 3 years ago

I think that would be a useful clarification, and would welcome a PR on this

harryjmoss commented 3 years ago

Attempted to address this in #551