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Thanks for clarifying. I agree that Chromebooks are not the ideal learning device for coding. I was thinking general schooling and glossed over your earlier c

by dpark 10y ago

Thanks for clarifying. I agree that Chromebooks are not the ideal learning device for coding. I was thinking general schooling and glossed over your earlier comment about teaching coding. I think they can probably work there, but you're right that a "real" computer is a better choice for that.

ecspike 10y ago
There are a couple of Chrome apps that can run offline and do coding. I've used Caret and Advanced REST client on occasion for things. It gets a bit tricky if you need something that can't work without a real webserver but there's a lot of beginner stuff you can do with it. crouton unlocked a bit more functionality giving you the possibility of a Linux base layer, albeit likely not a great idea to have kids put the machines into dev mode. But that might be workable if staff did it. I've dogfooded a bunch of the Web Development content we make at Udacity using either a pure Chromebook or Chromebook + Crouton.
- canuckintime 10y ago
  Please describe your PURE Chromebook setup to take the Udacity Web Development Course. Also is there a PURE Chromebook (or Chromebook+Android apps) setup to take an Udacity Android course?
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    Apparently ChromeOS devices are so useful that everyone has to force developer mode with Crouton to make use of them. Never got the point of a browser based OS.
    - toast0 10y ago
      A browser only OS isn't for everyone, but it does work well for the many people who literally never use anything other than their browser. If you know someone who never uses office applications and is always ending up with three layers of malware, a chromebook might be good for them. Video chat is a bit iffy too, if you don't care for google hangouts.
    - bitmapbrother 10y ago
      No, everyone does not have to force developer mode on. If you need the extra functionality then it's an option for some people. As for the point of Chrome OS, well, it's for people that don't need the bag of hurt desktop OS's provide.
- intoverflow2 10y ago
  > crouton Correct me if I'm wrong but is this not the hack where every time you boot your system it tells you to press a key to reset it and if you press that key it instantly blanks the partition. This seem absurd even for an expert user to use full time let alone school kids.
  - carussell 10y ago
    That's not crouton. That comes from Google's coreboot-derived firmware. See https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/2014-firmware-summit https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/2014-firmware-summit It's true, though, that the whole process needs to be made more straightforward and easily circumventable. It's just not a part of crouton.
    - intoverflow2 10y ago
      Ok but one press of space during boot on this scary looking screen [1] and the whole system will need to be reinstalled and all data on the linux partition will be lost correct? Just finding it ridiculous that HN users suggest this with a straight face every time we have this discussion. [1] https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/os-verification-is-off.jpg https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/os-veri...
      - carussell 10y ago
        Yes. It's stupid and is worse than it needs to be. See my last paragraph. I don't know what else I can say.
Adaptive 10y ago
I'm running a coding class right now that is almost entirely run over ssh on chromebooks to a linux server. Works beautifully. No fancy IDE, but lots of actual learning to code.
- kaspiCZ 10y ago
  Have you considered online tools such as Cloud9, replit etc.? If so, is the problem missing features, workflow or pricing?
  - 0xCMP 10y ago
    Eclipse's Che is also very interesting. I hate the name, but it was super when I tried it.
  - criddell 10y ago
    If I were teaching, I would definitely look at something like Cloud9. I'm in the process of going through Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails tutorial based on Cloud9 and I'm blown away by how good it is.
  - carussell 10y ago
    FWIW, amid the talk about Raspberry Pis, the (fully open) BeagleBone Black/Green has a default experience for casual-tinker-friendly programming where it spins up an on-board Cloud9 instance for the user to poke around. It's slightly more expensive than its Pi contemporary, but that's expected when everyone keeps flocking to the Pi and the alternative can't make use of the same volume discounts and self-fund engineering to put new board revisions out every year. And even for all that, it's a popular alternative—you're not left hanging out in no-man's land with some exotic hardware. Check the hackerboards.com surveys from over the years that show it trailing the Pi(s).
- willvarfar 10y ago
  Does X forwarding work? Or has someone got some kind of screen-scraping client that runs in a browser?
- yoz-y 10y ago
TeMPOraL 10y ago
I would expand coding to include general computer use. Sure, you can teach biology or physics or English using whatever device is most convenient. But if you're trying to teach the workings and use of computers (i.e. what most people will have on computer classes), using iPads and Chromebooks is teaching them lies that come from user-hostile pseudoabstractions.
- ux-app 10y ago
  > using iPads and Chromebooks is teaching them lies that come from user-hostile pseudoabstractions Absolutely. Most 12 year old kids don't know about file size units. Relative file sizes, converting between units etc. There's so much incidental learning that occurs too. The other day i was discussing file sizes with a student and we observed that there was a difference between a file's reported size vs size on disk. This led to a great little segue about physical disk structure, tracks, sectors and clusters. The boy was fascinated with some lower level detail. All that learning would have been lost if we were using a gimped cloud based FS.
  - criddell 10y ago
    > This led to a great little segue about physical disk structure, tracks, sectors and clusters. These days, those are abstractions as well. That's basically the API that the mass storage controller presents to the OS. I'm not sure you could explain a hard drive to a lay person anymore. Most of the time, I'm kind of surprised that they work at all.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > using iPads and Chromebooks is teaching them lies that come from user-hostile pseudoabstractions. Only if you are using them wrong; while I think iPads are poor tools forany purposes, including that one, from a UI perspective (or, at least, inefficient by the time you address the interface issues), iPads and Chromebooks don't restrict the ability to teach full-spectrum computing, as, they are perfectly capable tools for accessing and interacting with general purpose computers. Now, clearly, the exact details of how you use them in that teaching and th supporting infrastructure might be slightly different than if you were giving students PCs, but then, you need a network environment with educational infrastructure if you are teaching full-spectrum computing with modern relevance anyway, and the detail are going to vary by what you use on the front end. That doesn't rule out any front end choice, it just means that the front end choice impacts other choices.
baldfat 10y ago
We are possibly entering the age of thin clients for coding soon. With ssh and remote desktops being the best use of laptops and Chromebooks for coding. I do that now with a personal server that I remote into when coding at different locations. There is a HUGE divide between production and consumer devices that keeps increasing every year. People don't have multi-use devices. Many of my peers use their iPad for everything or even just their phone. Other than coding and video editing Chromebooks are pretty just as capable as a laptop in terms of production. Example: I needed to re-image my laptop at work (I have 3 desktops, 2 iPads and one laptop) and I realized that my use of the laptop is the same as a Chromebook. I had absolutely no files on the computer that I needed to get off before re-imaging. Everything was Bit Torrent Sync and Git and the rest were just a few programs that were easily installed or on the "cloud" aka Google and Amazon's computers. My own use of computers has always been desktop for video, image editing and coding (I need that screen space and a reference screen). I find laptops to always be very limiting for my production and that a Chromebook becomes a thin client with ssh and remote desktop. My $1,000 laptop is used like a $300 Chromebook.
- jimbokun 10y ago
  But will the average school be able to afford and administer servers For every student to ssh into?
  - baldfat 10y ago
    One server and one instance could easily do one class if not hundreds of students. Actually to have it done with a container would be very cheap and wouldn't require a high tier server. So it would cost less to do Chromebooks with a server for instances when they need more horse power or build tools.
  - fuzzybeard 10y ago
    It should be cheaper than giving full desktops/laptops to students. After all, it consolidates all the computer power. The pendulum is swinging back to mainframes. Have 1 server for all the students and spin up VMs or a single Linux instance.
  - 10y ago
carussell 10y ago
Someone has undertaken getting VSCode builds for Chromebooks.[1][2][3] I understand that you're (probably) not on the VSCode team, but if you have any influence to get somebody who can reach out there, that'd be swell. Anyone using VSCode on Linux seems to be relying on MS's freely-downloadable-but-technically-not-OSS builds, and just building wrapper installers around that. I might be wrong. Something like diverse builds that aren't dependent on Microsoft would be the first step to getting VSCode into various distros' system images so you can do "sudo apt-get install vscode" on Debian or possibly find it in the default install on Ubuntu. 1. https://headmelted.com/why-we-need-the-best-tools-on-chromebooks-and-raspberry-pi-3ab4c10a611c https://headmelted.com/why-we-need-the-best-tools-on-chromeb... 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12956597 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12956597 3. https://github.com/headmelted/code-builds/issues/10 https://github.com/headmelted/code-builds/issues/10

by dpark 10y ago

ecspike 10y ago

There are a couple of Chrome apps that can run offline and do coding. I've used Caret and Advanced REST client on occasion for things. It gets a bit tricky if you need something that can't work without a real webserver but there's a lot of beginner stuff you can do with it. crouton unlocked a bit more functionality giving you the possibility of a Linux base layer, albeit likely not a great idea to have kids put the machines into dev mode. But that might be workable if staff did it. I've dogfooded a bunch of the Web Development content we make at Udacity using either a pure Chromebook or Chromebook + Crouton.

canuckintime 10y ago
Please describe your PURE Chromebook setup to take the Udacity Web Development Course. Also is there a PURE Chromebook (or Chromebook+Android apps) setup to take an Udacity Android course?
- pjmlp 10y ago
  Apparently ChromeOS devices are so useful that everyone has to force developer mode with Crouton to make use of them. Never got the point of a browser based OS.
  - toast0 10y ago
    A browser only OS isn't for everyone, but it does work well for the many people who literally never use anything other than their browser. If you know someone who never uses office applications and is always ending up with three layers of malware, a chromebook might be good for them. Video chat is a bit iffy too, if you don't care for google hangouts.
  - bitmapbrother 10y ago
    No, everyone does not have to force developer mode on. If you need the extra functionality then it's an option for some people. As for the point of Chrome OS, well, it's for people that don't need the bag of hurt desktop OS's provide.
intoverflow2 10y ago
> crouton Correct me if I'm wrong but is this not the hack where every time you boot your system it tells you to press a key to reset it and if you press that key it instantly blanks the partition. This seem absurd even for an expert user to use full time let alone school kids.
- carussell 10y ago
  That's not crouton. That comes from Google's coreboot-derived firmware. See https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/2014-firmware-summit https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/2014-firmware-summit It's true, though, that the whole process needs to be made more straightforward and easily circumventable. It's just not a part of crouton.
  - intoverflow2 10y ago
    Ok but one press of space during boot on this scary looking screen [1] and the whole system will need to be reinstalled and all data on the linux partition will be lost correct? Just finding it ridiculous that HN users suggest this with a straight face every time we have this discussion. [1] https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/os-verification-is-off.jpg https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/os-veri...
    - carussell 10y ago
      Yes. It's stupid and is worse than it needs to be. See my last paragraph. I don't know what else I can say.

Adaptive 10y ago

I'm running a coding class right now that is almost entirely run over ssh on chromebooks to a linux server. Works beautifully. No fancy IDE, but lots of actual learning to code.

kaspiCZ 10y ago
Have you considered online tools such as Cloud9, replit etc.? If so, is the problem missing features, workflow or pricing?
- 0xCMP 10y ago
  Eclipse's Che is also very interesting. I hate the name, but it was super when I tried it.
- criddell 10y ago
  If I were teaching, I would definitely look at something like Cloud9. I'm in the process of going through Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails tutorial based on Cloud9 and I'm blown away by how good it is.
- carussell 10y ago
  FWIW, amid the talk about Raspberry Pis, the (fully open) BeagleBone Black/Green has a default experience for casual-tinker-friendly programming where it spins up an on-board Cloud9 instance for the user to poke around. It's slightly more expensive than its Pi contemporary, but that's expected when everyone keeps flocking to the Pi and the alternative can't make use of the same volume discounts and self-fund engineering to put new board revisions out every year. And even for all that, it's a popular alternative—you're not left hanging out in no-man's land with some exotic hardware. Check the hackerboards.com surveys from over the years that show it trailing the Pi(s).
willvarfar 10y ago
Does X forwarding work? Or has someone got some kind of screen-scraping client that runs in a browser?
yoz-y 10y ago

TeMPOraL 10y ago

I would expand coding to include general computer use. Sure, you can teach biology or physics or English using whatever device is most convenient. But if you're trying to teach the workings and use of computers (i.e. what most people will have on computer classes), using iPads and Chromebooks is teaching them lies that come from user-hostile pseudoabstractions.

ux-app 10y ago
> using iPads and Chromebooks is teaching them lies that come from user-hostile pseudoabstractions Absolutely. Most 12 year old kids don't know about file size units. Relative file sizes, converting between units etc. There's so much incidental learning that occurs too. The other day i was discussing file sizes with a student and we observed that there was a difference between a file's reported size vs size on disk. This led to a great little segue about physical disk structure, tracks, sectors and clusters. The boy was fascinated with some lower level detail. All that learning would have been lost if we were using a gimped cloud based FS.
- criddell 10y ago
  > This led to a great little segue about physical disk structure, tracks, sectors and clusters. These days, those are abstractions as well. That's basically the API that the mass storage controller presents to the OS. I'm not sure you could explain a hard drive to a lay person anymore. Most of the time, I'm kind of surprised that they work at all.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> using iPads and Chromebooks is teaching them lies that come from user-hostile pseudoabstractions. Only if you are using them wrong; while I think iPads are poor tools forany purposes, including that one, from a UI perspective (or, at least, inefficient by the time you address the interface issues), iPads and Chromebooks don't restrict the ability to teach full-spectrum computing, as, they are perfectly capable tools for accessing and interacting with general purpose computers. Now, clearly, the exact details of how you use them in that teaching and th supporting infrastructure might be slightly different than if you were giving students PCs, but then, you need a network environment with educational infrastructure if you are teaching full-spectrum computing with modern relevance anyway, and the detail are going to vary by what you use on the front end. That doesn't rule out any front end choice, it just means that the front end choice impacts other choices.

baldfat 10y ago

We are possibly entering the age of thin clients for coding soon. With ssh and remote desktops being the best use of laptops and Chromebooks for coding. I do that now with a personal server that I remote into when coding at different locations. There is a HUGE divide between production and consumer devices that keeps increasing every year. People don't have multi-use devices. Many of my peers use their iPad for everything or even just their phone. Other than coding and video editing Chromebooks are pretty just as capable as a laptop in terms of production. Example: I needed to re-image my laptop at work (I have 3 desktops, 2 iPads and one laptop) and I realized that my use of the laptop is the same as a Chromebook. I had absolutely no files on the computer that I needed to get off before re-imaging. Everything was Bit Torrent Sync and Git and the rest were just a few programs that were easily installed or on the "cloud" aka Google and Amazon's computers. My own use of computers has always been desktop for video, image editing and coding (I need that screen space and a reference screen). I find laptops to always be very limiting for my production and that a Chromebook becomes a thin client with ssh and remote desktop. My $1,000 laptop is used like a $300 Chromebook.

jimbokun 10y ago
But will the average school be able to afford and administer servers For every student to ssh into?
- baldfat 10y ago
  One server and one instance could easily do one class if not hundreds of students. Actually to have it done with a container would be very cheap and wouldn't require a high tier server. So it would cost less to do Chromebooks with a server for instances when they need more horse power or build tools.
- fuzzybeard 10y ago
  It should be cheaper than giving full desktops/laptops to students. After all, it consolidates all the computer power. The pendulum is swinging back to mainframes. Have 1 server for all the students and spin up VMs or a single Linux instance.
- 10y ago

carussell 10y ago

Someone has undertaken getting VSCode builds for Chromebooks.[1][2][3] I understand that you're (probably) not on the VSCode team, but if you have any influence to get somebody who can reach out there, that'd be swell. Anyone using VSCode on Linux seems to be relying on MS's freely-downloadable-but-technically-not-OSS builds, and just building wrapper installers around that. I might be wrong. Something like diverse builds that aren't dependent on Microsoft would be the first step to getting VSCode into various distros' system images so you can do "sudo apt-get install vscode" on Debian or possibly find it in the default install on Ubuntu. 1. https://headmelted.com/why-we-need-the-best-tools-on-chromebooks-and-raspberry-pi-3ab4c10a611c https://headmelted.com/why-we-need-the-best-tools-on-chromeb... 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12956597 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12956597 3. https://github.com/headmelted/code-builds/issues/10 https://github.com/headmelted/code-builds/issues/10