Introducing new edition of PyCharm for interactive Python learning
Learning to Code with Python
When should one start learning coding? Some think it’s best to start when you are young but no matter how old you are, it’s never too late to learn new things.
Many developers, if you ask them, would agree that the best programming language to begin with is Python. Yes, it’s an easy to learn yet powerful language with a great community and ecosystem around it.
Who Should use PyCharm Educational Edition
What should developer tools for learning be like? Should you learn in something very simple or maybe from the very beginning you should start with something more professional looking?
We believe there is no single right answer to this question, but for those who decide to become proficient not only in the language but also in the tooling, we announce a new edition of PyCharm, our environment for professional Python developers — PyCharm Educational Edition.
How it Helps Teachers and Students
PyCharm Educational Edition is a free product built upon our open-source PyCharm Community Edition that teachers and novice programmers can download and use at no cost. It offers a complete toolkit for both students and teachers of programming. These include essential features such as an integrated Python console, Debugger and VCS, along with unique educational features like new “Educational” project type, “fill in the missing code” exercises, intelligent hints, checks, smart suggestions, code auto-completion, and much more.
Instructors and course authors can use PyCharm Educational Edition to create, modify and share their own courses or assignments with lessons and tasks, create exercise code, define expected results, write tests that will work in the background, and also exploit the “fill in the missing code” educational technique, where you ask a student to insert the correct code in an already existing code sample.
From the student’s perspective the “Educational” project in PyCharm acts like an interactive course that includes tasks and files for editing, and a “Check” button, which gives instant feedback and scores the assignment.
Getting Started with PyCharm Educational Edition
More than 100 educators from different universities have already tried PyCharm Educational Edition during a private preview stage and they provided us with their invaluable feedback.
Today we are making it public and encourage you to read more about PyCharm Educational Edition on its website and help us spread the word. If you are ready to learn Python right now, then download it and get started with an interactive course. We recommend that you check out the Quick Start guide and watch the introductory video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCCHIfC-dtA
For a deeper dive into how and why we created PyCharm Educational Edition, read our blog post in PyCharm blog.
Did you know?
PyCharm Educational Edition is the 12th JetBrains IDE built on top of the IntelliJ platform and there are a number of external products building upon this open-source platform, including Google’s Android Studio.
JetBrains recently launched the Free Student License program. Any student or educator can use any JetBrains product for free! More than 50,000 have already registered.
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