Re: [Visualpython-users] Future = (Vpython + Glowscript) | Glowscript | ???

[Kevin K. <ka...@so...>]

I'm glad to see that Vpython has a future, and that you do have plans
to make it work on 64-bit Macs.

I would find requiring "rate" statements a bit annoying, but
tolerable.  I wonder whether it would become a major problem for new
programmers, though, as its necessity is not obvious.

One thing I would like to see is a good integration of units into the
computation.  I tell my students to keep units with their intermediate
results, and I suspect that most real physics teachers do also, so it
is a bit annoying that Vpython encourages (sometimes even requires)
unitless numbers.  I've been using the Unum package, which works
fairly well but is rather slow (I also had to add a sqrt function for
it).  

See the simulation (without animation---just using visual for optional
graphs) in 
http://gasstationwithoutpumps.wordpress.com/2012/06/04/soda-bottle-rocket-simulation-take-2
for an example of using Unum 

The visual package does not play nicely with Unum, since all the
animation and graphing has to be unitless.  I think that a little more
care in "duck typing" could have made the routines work just fine with
numbers that have units.