I support this, but I think the appropriate approach is to gather evidence. Many (most?) changes to lessons and methods start as experiments by instructors, so I think a set of instructors should produce the following for an upcoming workshop, which other instructors can try out:
- A fork of the workshop webpage with install instructions - A fork of the shell lesson - A fork of the git lesson Then, following some reports from instructors after a few workshops and a few inevitable tweaks, we can see if this merits widespread adoption. I agree with Tracy that command-line editor skills are potentially useful for many learners, but I think (without real evidence) that (a) learning a simple command line editor like nano is a low barrier *once one is familiar with the shell and the notion of a text editor already*, so people using remote machines will be much of the way there under this approach, and (b) the overall gain in improved workshop flow may be more important. A command-line editor may be one of the things one "demos" in a workshop where learners have a question or one anticipates that some have immediate remote computing needs. On Thu, Mar 30, 2017 at 5:58 AM Raniere Silva <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > > today at the workshop, > one of the our Windows learners asked me why after quit nano the > previous command weren't available when scroll the window up. > The learner was very annoyed to not be able to see the history. > > I would like to motion to change nano with Atom as the recommended/default > text editor for our workshops. I don't want to start yet another flame war, > we already had lots and lots of discussion about this, > so I will summarise the benefits and drawback of my proposal. > I will ask that before suggest another text editor instead of Atom, > stop and think that the text editor will benefit novice learners > instead of just make your life easy as instructor because you use X on > your daily work. (I don't use Atom!) > > # Benefits > > - Is open source. > - (Just) works in Windows, Mac and Linux. > - Easy to install in Windows, Mac and Linux. > - "All versions" are available to Windows, Mac and Linux. > > Some software, e.g. Skype, works in Windows, Mac and Linux but > different versions are available to different OS. > - Configure PATH to be accessible from Git Bash. > > No need for extra configuration or our script to fix PATH. > - Well mantained and supported. > - Syntax highlight out of the box (AFAIK). > - Lots of plugins for learners that decide to keep using Atom. > > AFAIK there is a plugin that allow learners to use Atom > to edit remote files, e.g. on clusters. > - Beautiful interface. > > # Drawback > > - Learners and instructions will need to switch windows. > > # (My own) conclusions > > Replace nano with Atom will avoid many of the our issues during the > workshop, such as "we will use nano but if you don't have nano you can > use X", and reduce the volunteer work that we need to maintain the > quality of our workshops. The price that we will need to pay is switch > windows during the workshop. > > Thanks, > Raniere > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/listinfo/discuss
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