[Tutor] Tutoring co-workers.

[trent shipley]

I'm looking at the possibility of teaching programming to a couple of
coworkers.  Python is an excellent pedagogical programming language, with
the added benefit of what you learn being directly applicable and
marketable in many work contexts.

First, I was wondering if you could recommend any good, accessible
textbooks with many exercises for brand new and C+/B- level programmers new
to Python which could segue into Python plus statistics or Python plus
reporting, and beyond that into very early Python plus data science.

Second, and more important, I took BASIC in high school.  When I went to a
little liberal arts college in central Kansas in the late 1980s, I took
computer science 110 and 210 in Pascal and turned in the code for my
assignments on fan-fold paper hard copy.  My professor (with an actual PhD)
graded the code in beautiful red ink with all the care and attention of a
composition instructor for college freshmen.  I didn't realize how much I
got out of it, until I realized how much I missed that kind of feedback
when I take computer classes at a community college, especially when the
classes are self-paced distance learning classes.  I also can tell younger
programmers have never had the same academic formation I did.

I would like a coding environment where I can comment and edit code and
other text like it was Microsoft Word in draft mode.  In fact, I want to be
able to comment on comments.  You should be able to do remote, real-time
Talmudic disputation in this development environment, and go back through
versions with all the text changes and evolution of comments graphically
illustrated with popup "tooltips", and you should be able to drill down for
change metadata.

My goal is to use it for teaching coding by giving the same attention to my
students' feedback which Marrion Deckert gave to my ealy software writing
education, but without paper and at a distance.  How close can I come to
this vaporware ideal?

(Oh yes, and a student should be able to drop their corrected code, with
all the history and comments hidden, straight into a syntax checker, REPL,
interpreter, or compiler.)

Trent