[Events] Feedback from training session

[Deborah Hanus]

Dear friends,

I tend to agree with Jessica on this one.   If when I had started
programming, I had had to install three apps (including git -- which is a
giant tarball of frustration if you do not understand it) and follow more
than a page of instructions, I think that I would have felt a bit
overwhelmed and wondered if "learning to program" was actually worth it to
me.

That said, getting comfortable with git, django, etc. is a great thing to
do, and I think people should be introduced to those tools early in their
programming career. However, because understanding how all of the
applications work together can be very confusing, I think we should put a
lot of thought into how to present it clearly.

How would you guys feel about offering an optional "Part 2" to this
introduction on another weekend?  That way the students who are really
excited about programming can come back another day to add even more tools
to their repertoire, while the students who would prefer a slower
introduction, can spend more time getting comfortable with python on their
own before diving into everything else.

Looking forward to this weekend!

Deborah

On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 10:09 PM, Jessica McKellar <
jessica.mckellar at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> [ cc'd are the staff who may not be on events@ already ]
>
> We had our training session tonight. Thank you to everyone who attended.
>
> We had 3 tasks:
>
> 1. Make sure everyone is comfortable getting Python installed, running
> Python, and running Python scripts, on Windows, OS X, and Linux.
> 2. Describe the ColorWall, run it, and browse the existing Effects.
> 3. Describe the web app, get the dependencies installed, and run it.
>
> 1 and 2 were very easy, which is great.
>
> For me, trying to think from the perspective of a new programmer with
> potentially no command-line experience, 3 was overwhelming. Some of this was
> not the fault of the project -- for example, alwaysdata was down for a part
> of the session. However, I think signing up for services, git, ssh+Putty,
> ssh keys, Django, a new text editor, and using a bash prompt, all in
> addition to learning Python, is too much. I worry that this long, involved
> setup is going to scare people away from showing up on Saturday -- some
> people are already intimidate by Python alone.
>
> Asheesh, I know that you put a lot of work into this, which I appreciate,
> but after going through the steps on the wiki, and watching how much effort
> and debugging had to go into the Windows setup in particular, I'm not
> comfortable with having anyone go through the web app setup as currently
> documented tomorrow. I would prefer that they just set up Python and the
> ColorWall.
>
> One possibility for retaining the web app as a project would be modifying
> the setup so that it is locally hosted and doesn't use git, and have both
> the setup and the project work happen on Saturday. That way only people who
> want to handle the setup will do it. I don't know if 1.5 days is enough time
> to make these modifications. Asheesh, what do you think about this idea?
>
> Other people at the training session, I'd appreciate your thoughts. Given
> your experiences tonight, what project structure do you think will result in
> the most learning + confidence + satisfaction for our attendees?
>
> -Jessica
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openhatch.org/pipermail/events/attachments/20110303/6824abc1/attachment-0001.html>