superturtle 1.3.0

Extensions to Python's turtle

Superturtle

Superturtle provides extensions to Python's turtle module, supporting richer drawing, image export, and animation.

Installation

First, make sure ImageMagick is installed. (If you use homebrew, this can be accomplished with brew install imagemagick.) Then, Superturtle can be installed using pip or poetry.

pip install superturtle

Usage

Please see the Superturtle documentation.

Pedagogy

This module was originally developed as part of Making With Code, a constructionist introductory computer science curriculum. Perhaps the most unusual design decision is this module's heavy use of context managers. For example:

from turtle import forward
from superturtle.stroke import dots

with dots():
    forward(100)

Context managers are generally not introduced early in a CS curriculum, but they fit naturally with other constructs which contextualize code blocks: loops, conditionals, and function definition. We hypothesize that introducing intuitive context managers with easy-to-visualize effects may reinforce the more abstract role of control structures, and may support students in learning to read indented Python code.