I support this change in concept and agree with Noam that it should only
be undertaken broadly following experimentation to make sure it works
more effectively than the current approach and to iron out any
unanticipated issues.
Ethan
On 03/30/2017 07:13 AM, Noam Ross wrote:
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]
<mailto:[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
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