[Events] Planning for UMD: some thoughts, and a request for feedback

[Jessica McKellar]

Hi Asheesh,

Thanks for writing up this material. Some comments:

> Command-line skills have to be taught early
> -------------------------------------------
>
> At Penn, not everyone had command line skills. The quickest way to teach the
> basics is probably to use the Boston Python Workshop's quick CLI tutorial,
> as part of Laptop Setup Time.

Definitely definitely. Want me to work up an extended wiki page on
this, adapting the BPW material? I like the idea of bonus material and
can draft a wiki page for that (I have some ideas for cribbing from
6.033, the intro to systems class at MIT, which has CLI exercises
sprinkled throughout the curriculum).

Question about IRC: at Boston Python events we frequently hit the
Freenode max connection limit. Are we going to be NATted such that
this is a potential problem? What can we do to make sure this doesn't
happen?

I'm happy to lead the IRC section or more broadly the "Communicating
as a user" section.

Question about "Getting, modifying, and verifying open source software
(getting code; local patching)": I don't see the diff/patch mission
mentioned in the outline. Did you want students to go through that?

I would also not give students a choice between git and svn -- I'd
pick whichever we think is in the best shape / most robust right now
and have them do it. They can do the other as a bonus exercise if they
want.

I'm happy to teach any of the modules.

If you can summarize for me which parts you want me to take, as soon
as possible, I'll start practicing the material.

-Jessica