[Events] economic diversity

[Dave Crossland]

On 26 January 2013 15:13, Mike Linksvayer <ml at gondwanaland.com> wrote:
>
> the idea that everyone
> might learn to program, at least a bit, has really taken off in the
> past year or two.

I also see this trend :-)

>>     - And if it is practical, how can I *sell* its practicality to get
>> agencies onboard and students in the door?

I suggest testimonials are a very effective way to sell anything. :-)

> for most people,
> it'll take years from starting to program to get a job primarily doing
> programming or related work

I think people always have some hobbies that they can choose to swap
out for programming - if watching television is considered a hobby :-)

I suggest people will switch hobbies if the fun is emphasized, and I
guess that depends most on the choice of projects people are suggested
to contribute to in the workshop?

>> (The Columbus Public Library machines, for example, run only IE, Word, and
>> Excel; and the library IT director *does not have the ability* to loosen
>> them up.  Grrrr.)

(Per below, IE6 may not be enough ;-)

>>     - But even if computers can be found for the workshop itself, if the
>> students don't have regular access to computers that are more or less their
>> own, will they be able to follow up on the workshops afterward?  It seems
>> almost cruel to show people this kind of fun if they can't follow up.
>
> I don't really think access to computers is a problem that a
> teach-coding project can solve on its own. It seems to me that
> computers are, or are getting very close to, cheap enough that most
> people who want one have one

I agree - I think its a knowledge problem about where to get one very
cheap or even for free, rather than a in-affordability problem, and a
workshop can provide the needed pointers as part of the 'what to do
next' content.

>>     - Is there any practical over-the-web programming solution?  One where
>> students could actually do things like keep their files, install packages,
>> etc.?  Then a student could conceivably pursue her own programming over a
>> web browser in a library.

Yes, web is the answer, I think :-)

http://ace.ajax.org makes writing Python (or anything else) on the web
quite pleasant, and a private but publicly accessible instance of
iPython Notebook with a lot of packages preinstalled would go a long
way.

For first introductions, http://www.skulpt.org (or similar, I've seen
a few things like that) has really zero overhead.

> OpenHatch sprints have shown the necessity of excellent laptop setup
> instructions and help. Complementary to this might be identifying open
> source projects that require minimal or zero local setup, because
> state is in a public repository, editing of the repository can be done
> via web, and code is executed in client. There must be lots of
> projects that at least come close given all of the client-side
> javascript projects out there.

Yes. For OH style contributing workshops, I note that GitHub projects
can be contributed to directly through the GitHub website, and the
GitHub v3 JS API is enough to do it as a 3rd party, eg http://prose.io