Hey, I want to get into python and I took an entry level Computational linear algebra class that used python and we used google colab as the IDE. I know it’s not a really IDE per say in terms of debugging and what not but are there other reasons to not use google colab? I want to get started learning more things and I’m wondering if I should just skip the downloads of other IDEs. Honestly downloading all these data packages and other things like, Jupyter, panda, Homebrew, Pip and other things are kind of intimidating and I was messing with it for over 2 hours yesterday before giving up and starting a project in google colab because of some “syntax errors” in my terminal while downloading.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of google colab and what would you recommend to someone who is starting out?

(Also please no hate but I am on a MacBook Pro if that influences your decision)

I'm an engineering professor, and I teach a lab course where I provide skeleton code to help students with their data analysis. Typically their data comes in the form of .csv files which they then need to import, do some math to, and then graph. On occasion I have an interactive tool.

I've been tasked with converting all of my pre-provided MATLAB scripts to Python this summer (understandable but a bit of a pain). I have very little experience with Python, but I'm not too worried about figuring out syntax, etc - more importantly, I wanted to hear from you all what interface you would suggest for my specific educational objectives.

At the beginning of the course, I tend to provide MATLAB livescripts (my understanding is that this similar to jupyter notebooks, with text/images along with cells of code) in addition to the basic script, to help with student comprehension. In 1-2 cases I have them directly convert the livescript to a pdf, so I can see their code and outputs in a single document. Later, I have them export their graphs/figures from MATLAB to put in their reports. In at least one case, I ask them to collaborate on their code.

My understanding is that Google Colab and/or Jupyter would be a good choice for me, since I'm asking students to exclusively perform data analysis rather than any type of dev work. My main conundrum is that Colab seems to be easier to use/better for collaboration, but Jupyter works better with large data files since it's running on your machine (and possibly makes prettier figures?). Maybe there's some secret third thing that would be better? The students theoretically should all be familiar with and have Anaconda and Pulsar installed from a previous course, but for our purposes I think it is less useful.

I'd appreciate any thoughts you might have. Thanks!