One issue we’re dealing with is that a significant number (20%, perhaps?) of the students in our intro course are not planning to major in computer science, and they are not technically savvy. Heck, the majority of our students have never programmed before. Every extra step can cause a lot of pain.

So: the main issue we have with PyQt is with the installation, at least on OS X:

http://www.oak-tree.us/blog/index.php/2009/05/12/pyqt-mac

Most students want to work on their own computers, but asking new programmers to follow those instructions would lead to mass confusion, and a mass exodus from the course when they can’t get it to work.

Heck, since recent versions, the error printed when calling h() is a very understandable
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “”, line 1, in
File “”, line 2, in h
UnboundLocalError: local variable ‘i’ referenced before assignment

Interfaces, perhaps via ABCs, might be a better way to teach the good information hiding practices that are general across languages.

Single underscore is fine – in Python-speak, it’s analogous to protected in Java. Double underscore is equivalent to Java’s “private”, which is almost never “what you actually want”.

IMO, it should be noted that the double underscore magic exists, but should not be used unless you’ve got a really, really good reason.

Also, IMO, go for properties: getters/setters aren’t incredibly “pythonic”, and encourage the writing of “busy code”. With properties, you can start out using variables, then when you realize you need more logic, you can replace them with with properties.