Remote/Pair-Programming in-the-cloud

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, Aug 6, 2019 at 7:09 AM DL Neil <PythonList at danceswithmice.info> wrote:
> As a matter of interest (and if you don't mind sharing), which packages
> are included in the organisation's student "stack"?
> (again: no 'judgement', please)

TBH the best stack I can describe is what we teach for JavaScript
students, as they're the ones who have the bootcamp format (although
that's now changing, as we have a data science bootcamp built on
Python - but I don't know whether the tech stack has been settled
yet). We get them to use VS Code, ESLint, Node.js, npm, git,
PostgreSQL (once they get to that point), and a handful of JavaScript
libraries/packages.

> How 'expensive' or distracting is it, merely in terms of trainees
> failing to follow the installation/configuration instructions?

Not too bad; there's some cost when someone has trouble setting up
eslint, or when their editor's indentation settings don't match the
linter's, but it's manageable.

> Do you find 'my first program' (when trainees are first required to use
> the 'stack') to be a major failure/frustration/drop-out point? To what
> degree might that be caused by the trainee realising that (s)he has to
> turn 'book knowledge' into coding-action, ie 'the real world', and how
> much might be the 'cost' of those tools?

No, but I think the level of pressure in a bootcamp tends to lead to
people just blindly accepting what they're given, rather than
objecting to it. "You want me to use VS Code? Okay, no prob, what do I
click on?". There isn't time to debate it, because within the next
three hours, there are about eight hours' worth of work to be done :)
Things would be different in other contexts.

ChrisA