This post is admittedly for a very small niche of readers. If you are a Windows user - with virtually no Mac experience - and happen to be teaching college students how to program Python with Eclipse then read on…
I recently began my third semester teaching Intro to Business Programming at Fairfield University. Python is the language of choice for this course. For an IDE, we use EasyEclipse, which packages useful plugins together by purpose (LAMP, Java, etc.). One of the LAMP plugins is PyDev, which adds a very nice set of tools for writing Python scripts in Eclipse. However, PyDev needs to be told where to find the Python interpreter. On Windows, this is no problem. Students almost always accept the Python installer’s default install path or change it to Program Files. But the Mac…
I’ve spent very little time on a Mac. I can find my way around to get some things done (basic office work). I’ve never installed or configured software on a Mac. I’m not sure I’ve ever even powered one up… I couldn’t even describe the basic setup of a Mac. Shameful, I know… I like Apple. My iPod Touch is amazing. This is probably the single most impressive gadget I own (and I own many). But I hate Apple’s software. I’ll save that for another post, but for now I’ll ask why the search box has to lose focus when I Alt-Tab out of and back to iTunes?
Anyway… So clearly I’m guessing when I try to help a student find his or her Python interpreter. Fortunately, Mac bundles a Python interpreter into its OS. So no install woes. For those in the niche I described above, here’s the interpreter path to lead your students to:
/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/bin/python
As far as I could tell, there were about 3000 other ways to find paths containing Python. Not sure what those were all about.