OpenTechSchool/python-data-intro

Discourage QtConsole

Opened this issue · 2 comments

lehmannro commented

Participant review: Under at least Mac OS, it's non-trivial to install PyQt (for ipython qtconsole). We should not encourage it, or provide better instructions.

projectgus commented

Thanks for passing this on Robert. I agree we should avoid encouraging things that are hard to install.

I don't have an OS X machine to test, but was the participant using Anaconda? I thought Anaconda came with Qt+PyQt out of the box, but maybe it doesn't on OS X.

If Anaconda is the key difference, maybe that's the caveat we should place around qtconsole - that if you're not using Python via Anaconda then you might want to use one of the suggested alternatives.

Deleted user commented

For the sake of simplicity it makes sense to require that learners install Anaconda. We can then add links to references for other options if they insist on doing it some other way. The tutorials might otherwise get bogged down with asides and footnotes about inconsistencies between platforms and package conflicts. The focus should be DS, and Anaconda provides an efficient way to quickly get started.