Just my 2c: Notepad can safely be substituted for nano for Windows users. No additional setup required, and it's something learners are likely already familiar with. In my opinion Atom is a bit overkill for what we are asking learners to do, i.e., create small files, edit existing files and write commit messages.
Thanks, Ashwin On Thu, Mar 30, 2017 at 10:14 PM, Azalee Bostroem <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Raniere, > > Thanks for bringing this up. I think it is always good to re-examine our > options as the field is constantly changing. I agree that Nano isn’t ideal > and its always disappointing to tell students we’re going to use it for the > workshop and they will likely never use it again. My big goal is to have > students on all platforms do the same thing when I’m teaching - so that what > I demonstrate applies to everyone. I’m not familiar with some of the > terminology in your pro/con list, so apologies if you covered this: > > during the git lesson, can students set the editor to atom or does some > pre-configuration need to happen? If there is configuration, is that > something we can easily put in the installation instructions? > can I open it from the command line (without setting something in my bash > profile)? I don’t want each platform to launch it differently. I also worry > about the overhead with the initial save - making sure everyone uses the > same name so they can continue to type what you are typing for the remainder > of the lesson. > > > Having to switch between windows is a very big con to me, and I’m with Noam > (and others) in that I’d like to know that it isn’t going to be too much of > a cognitive load for students. My experience, even with Nano, is that there > is so much that is brand new when learning git, that people often get lost > between changing text in the editor, saving, then committing with a commit > message and I fear that changing windows will make this even worse. > > > -Azalee > > > > > On Mar 30, 2017, at 2:58 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 > > > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/listinfo/discuss _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/listinfo/discuss
