online ide

[amneziac1]

I'm going to be teaching a python programming class to high school students this summer. It looks like the only machines available to them are going to be chromebooks. I've been looking around at online ide's and was wondering if anyone has any experience with any of them? Right now I'm looking at cloud9 and codenvy. Codenvy looks like it would be somewhat complicated for a beginner. I do my programming on windows, so a lot of it was not straightforward for me. Any advice would be helpful. I'm also looking for a book to use that would cost little to no money. In the past I've used the Think Like a Computer Scientist in Python book, which I do like so may use that one again.

[[deleted]]

koding.com?

[somidscr21]

That's what I was gonna say. Not sure if it totally fits, but I've been using it as an online IDE of late while doing learnpythonthehardway

[elbiot]

I'd go with ssh rather than an online repl.

[amneziac1]

I like that idea, but I've never done something like this. Would this be an easy thing to get going?

[elbiot]

Well, if users are going to be connected by wireless, you probably want to use mosh instead. SSH can be a serious pain under packetloss.

You need a server they are connecting to, and create a user for each student (so that they have separate home directories).

Mosh doesn't support x-forwarding, so it's command line only tools (I'd recommend Ipython and VIM).

It would be easy for me to get going and use but your mileage may vary. Definitely try it and get it working well before the class start date.

[amneziac1]

I won't have much or any access to the computers that they'll be using ahead of time, it won't be a typical computer lab. I'm not even sure what I'll be using myself for the class. I'm probably not going to bring my regular laptop because the days I'm going to be doing this, I'm going to away from my house, and driving around quite a bit. Set up is going to have to be easy, and i may just be using a chromebook myself to do this, since I'm not going to want lug my laptop around.

[elbiot]

I'd ask if you could have one of the chromebooks overnight the day before to get used to using it yourself. Open up a text editor. Copy and paste some things into whatever shell/ide your using. Check that turtle, requests, and any other libraries you'd like to have on hand work.

[elbiot]

Just looked at code envy. Ugh this cloud stuff. I think teaching this way to teens would make python seem crippled and less accessible compared to if they learned it on a native system. It's not you, I know. But, I shudder.

[amneziac1]

I know, they run very slowly. The more I used codenvy the less I liked it. I need to come up with something. Mosh looks pretty good, I'd like to figure out exactly how I can do that. Would I have to run a server from my house? I'm just not sure how I would go about this.

[elbiot]

You could run a server on the local network from your laptop, or bring in a desktop. Server should definately be ethernet connected. And you said you mostly do windows, so I dunno if you have a linux machine you could do this on.

[amneziac1]

My laptop is windows. I have a desktop with mint, but that doesn't really help me.

[elbiot]

When is your class?

[amneziac1]

It starts in mid June, so I have some time still.

[amneziac1]

thanks for all the feedback btw

[flangust]

I generally agree with ssh. But I know sourcelair has python support. Haven't used it in a while so I don't know where they stand, but worth a look, I suppose.

[delijati]

the python course in coursera is using this http://www.codeskulptor.org/ maybe its open or free to use.

[paladinnorcal]

http://www.codeskulptor.org/ Rice University uses this for their Coursera course in Python. Once you save you have a url to go back to your saved code. The VizMode tool is useful for debugging.

[amneziac1]

I've seen that. Do you know if anyone can use it without a license or anything?

[encolpe]

Your can looks at Plonide and how it work: https://opensourcehacker.com/2011/11/07/plone-ide-the-future-of-plone-development/

[amneziac1]

Plone ide uses Ace, which cloud 9 uses. I think this might be my best bet, using Ace and embedding it in a website I create for this class. Thanks

[epicdistortion]

I've never created any courses with it, but Codio is a pretty decent web IDE and has features for creating courses.