Stepping down

[Bruce Sherwood]

For many years I have been the lead developer of VPython, but now at age 86 I'm tired and stepping down. Steve Spicklemire is stepping into this role. Over many years Steve has made major contributions to VPython. He is a professor of physics and engineering at the University of Indianapolis.

Steve and Aaron Titus are co-authors with Ruth Chabay and me of the 5th edition of the calculus-based intro physics textbook Matter & Interactions, which will be released by the publisher Wiley in February 2025. We are excited that the ebook version will include embedded Web VPython programs to vivify the physics concepts. Steve did a lot of work to make the Web VPython programs meet accessibility standards. You will soon see some of these features in Web VPython.

Bruce

[Mark Morgan]

All the best to Bruce in your retirement!  You have been a wonderful mentor and helped countless people in their pursuit of Vpython excellence.

Mark Morgan

[Bruce Sherwood]

I also want to acknowledge the important contributions made by John Coady and Matt Craig. The old version of the vpython module was written in C++, and John made a version written in Python, which is much easier to work with. John and Matt have done a lot of work to continually update vpython installers for diverse environments including Jupyter notebooks.

Here is an article about the history of VPython: https://brucesherwood.net/?p=136

Bruce

[Joe Heafner]

> On Dec 23, 2024, at 16:42, Bruce Sherwood <bruce.s...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> For many years I have been the lead developer of VPython, but now at age 86 I'm tired and stepping down. Steve Spicklemire is stepping into this role. Over many years Steve has made major contributions to VPython. He is a professor of physics and engineering at the University of Indianapolis.
>

VPython has changed the world. There is no greater legacy. Thank you.

Joe Heafner
Sent from one of my Macs

[Rob Salgado]

Bruce,

Thanks for all of your efforts, vision, and leadership.

With the rise of Python and the fall of VRML, 

VPython and (later) Glowscript made computation and interactive 3D-visualizations for physics 

easier for physics students and physicists.

For nostalgic purposes,

here is the earliest version of the VPython site from the archive.org site:

https://web.archive.org/web/20020120132520/https://www.vpython.org/

(And thanks for "Electric & Magnetic Interactions", which provided a refreshing viewpoint for teaching electromagnetism.)

Rob Salgado

[Horst JENS]

Thank you for your work, Bruce!