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This type of system seems obvious for programming courses but I wonder how intuitive it is for pure documents; the classic essay or report style assignments. At

This type of system seems obvious for programming courses but I wonder how intuitive it is for pure documents; the classic essay or report style assignments. At what age do kids embrace Markdown as the single source of truth for their documents? Do technical writers within Google use Gerrit, or whatever their Perforce based review process is called, as a core part of their collaborative workflow like coders do?

ma2rten 6y ago
Yes, technical writers at google use the regular code review progress (the code review tool is called critique).
baron816 6y ago
Thinking back to my college liberal arts classes, I think this would’ve been great. I wish my professors would’ve required going back and revising papers—making them more of an iterative process.
coderdd 6y ago
The review system at Google is just a review system. My main concern with this approach is, doing a review is tedious work. Getting the context, keeping an eye on changes, giving honest but non-offensive and actionable feedback. Clearly a good way, but fear it wouldn't scale to a classroom.
saagarjha 6y ago
> At what age do kids embrace Markdown as the single source of truth for their documents? Anecdotally, never for most students. I know many of my college classes required submissions in Microsoft Word format.
- LifeIsBio 6y ago
  Never seems like the correct answer to me too. Everyone I've introduced to it outside of CS doesn't see an immediate appeal.
OkayPhysicist 6y ago
Markdown is out of its league for proper typestting. LaTeX is superior in a major way.
- jsinai 6y ago
  Markdown is dead simple, quick and has minimal overhead. Sometimes the power of convenience trumps the power of features. It’s a trade-off. I would hate to have to use LaTeX for every small document I compose, but then I would hate to write anything longer than 3-4 pages in Markdown or that really required formatting (like a thesis). It comes down to flexibility and what the requirements are.
  - sradman 6y ago
    Yet Markdown has become the de facto standard for creating eBooks. Long and/or complex documents need to move to a multi-file build process independent of whether Markdown is used.
    - jsinai 6y ago
      True. I hadn’t thought about this. With some CSS overhead you can really have control over formatting.
      - user5994461 6y ago
        I'm writing some legal documents in Word alongside some documentation at the moment. The legal documents are long documents made entirely of texts. That would work fine in Markdown. The only challenge might be the first page where the formatting is wild with logos and texts thrown around.
  - OkayPhysicist 6y ago
    The required LaTeX for simple documents is correspondingly simple. You need less than 10 commands to generate a normal essay, and most are the same in everything. The power of BibTex alone makes it worth it, especially when all academic databases output BibTex entries.
metrokoi 6y ago
Everyone but programming instructors tend to be resistant to solutions such as this. Sadly, I only see this being used for programming courses at least for the time being, which is a shame because I can see the features such as draft iterations and commenting useful for traditional essays or reports. Even Classroom being associated with GitHub can be an intimidating barrier to entry. I hope Classroom is able to make some intuitive tutorials and example use-cases to make itself more appealing to the layperson.
ShamelessC 6y ago
This is peak hacker news. I'm not entirely certain I'm understanding your concern as I don't see anything in the feature list about how they handle "pure documents". My assumption is that they expect you to use markdown for such submissions (a valid choice for programming-based learning) and you're suggesting this should be more widespread and used for teaching other subjects? > At what age do kids embrace Markdown as the single source of truth for their documents? I love markdown. I _want_ it to be used everywhere. But I know of adults who are barely interested in or capable of using Word/Google Docs correctly. You want _kids_ to use _markdown_!? That is one of the more absurd things I've seen on hacker news. Up there with that guy who suggested Dropbox wasn't necessary because surely the average person can figure out how to use rsync to an external hard drive. A sibling comment managed to take this even further by suggesting LaTeX?! You want kids, in grade school, to learn how to use LaTeX? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills! Are you all being serious? What's next, all assignments need to be submitted using JSON so teachers can program their own essay viewers? That's obviously hyperbole, but rich text, Word or Google Docs are very clearly the best option for essay style assignments. Those options have their flaws from a technical perspective but you seriously need to look outside the hacker news echo chamber if you think this is a good idea. Many of these people are going to go into careers where if they submitted their work as a plaintext markdown document their boss is going to say "what the fuck am I supposed to do with this?" Again, this is such a strange suggestion to me that I feel like I'm misinterpreting it. If that's the case I apologise.
- sradman 6y ago
  > I don't see anything in the feature list about how they handle "pure documents". True, but I’m taking the product name “Github Classroom” seriously. Maybe it should have been named “CSLab”. I think that the Scrum-like tools and processes that developers have refined over the last decade can be used in any endeavour that generates digital artifacts from text source files. Github/Gerrit workflows seem ideal for these types of collaborative projects but I really don’t know; thus the question marks. My conclusion from your feedback is that a Google Docs-like WebUI is a requirement and my question switches to when is it appropriate to peak under the covers and see the plumbing.
pfkurtz 6y ago
Really, shouldn't org-mode be taught to toddlers?

ma2rten 6y ago

Yes, technical writers at google use the regular code review progress (the code review tool is called critique).

baron816 6y ago

Thinking back to my college liberal arts classes, I think this would’ve been great. I wish my professors would’ve required going back and revising papers—making them more of an iterative process.

coderdd 6y ago

The review system at Google is just a review system. My main concern with this approach is, doing a review is tedious work. Getting the context, keeping an eye on changes, giving honest but non-offensive and actionable feedback. Clearly a good way, but fear it wouldn't scale to a classroom.

saagarjha 6y ago

> At what age do kids embrace Markdown as the single source of truth for their documents? Anecdotally, never for most students. I know many of my college classes required submissions in Microsoft Word format.

LifeIsBio 6y ago
Never seems like the correct answer to me too. Everyone I've introduced to it outside of CS doesn't see an immediate appeal.

OkayPhysicist 6y ago

Markdown is out of its league for proper typestting. LaTeX is superior in a major way.

jsinai 6y ago
Markdown is dead simple, quick and has minimal overhead. Sometimes the power of convenience trumps the power of features. It’s a trade-off. I would hate to have to use LaTeX for every small document I compose, but then I would hate to write anything longer than 3-4 pages in Markdown or that really required formatting (like a thesis). It comes down to flexibility and what the requirements are.
- sradman 6y ago
  Yet Markdown has become the de facto standard for creating eBooks. Long and/or complex documents need to move to a multi-file build process independent of whether Markdown is used.
  - jsinai 6y ago
    True. I hadn’t thought about this. With some CSS overhead you can really have control over formatting.
    - user5994461 6y ago
      I'm writing some legal documents in Word alongside some documentation at the moment. The legal documents are long documents made entirely of texts. That would work fine in Markdown. The only challenge might be the first page where the formatting is wild with logos and texts thrown around.
- OkayPhysicist 6y ago
  The required LaTeX for simple documents is correspondingly simple. You need less than 10 commands to generate a normal essay, and most are the same in everything. The power of BibTex alone makes it worth it, especially when all academic databases output BibTex entries.

metrokoi 6y ago

Everyone but programming instructors tend to be resistant to solutions such as this. Sadly, I only see this being used for programming courses at least for the time being, which is a shame because I can see the features such as draft iterations and commenting useful for traditional essays or reports. Even Classroom being associated with GitHub can be an intimidating barrier to entry. I hope Classroom is able to make some intuitive tutorials and example use-cases to make itself more appealing to the layperson.

ShamelessC 6y ago

This is peak hacker news. I'm not entirely certain I'm understanding your concern as I don't see anything in the feature list about how they handle "pure documents". My assumption is that they expect you to use markdown for such submissions (a valid choice for programming-based learning) and you're suggesting this should be more widespread and used for teaching other subjects? > At what age do kids embrace Markdown as the single source of truth for their documents? I love markdown. I _want_ it to be used everywhere. But I know of adults who are barely interested in or capable of using Word/Google Docs correctly. You want _kids_ to use _markdown_!? That is one of the more absurd things I've seen on hacker news. Up there with that guy who suggested Dropbox wasn't necessary because surely the average person can figure out how to use rsync to an external hard drive. A sibling comment managed to take this even further by suggesting LaTeX?! You want kids, in grade school, to learn how to use LaTeX? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills! Are you all being serious? What's next, all assignments need to be submitted using JSON so teachers can program their own essay viewers? That's obviously hyperbole, but rich text, Word or Google Docs are very clearly the best option for essay style assignments. Those options have their flaws from a technical perspective but you seriously need to look outside the hacker news echo chamber if you think this is a good idea. Many of these people are going to go into careers where if they submitted their work as a plaintext markdown document their boss is going to say "what the fuck am I supposed to do with this?" Again, this is such a strange suggestion to me that I feel like I'm misinterpreting it. If that's the case I apologise.

sradman 6y ago
> I don't see anything in the feature list about how they handle "pure documents". True, but I’m taking the product name “Github Classroom” seriously. Maybe it should have been named “CSLab”. I think that the Scrum-like tools and processes that developers have refined over the last decade can be used in any endeavour that generates digital artifacts from text source files. Github/Gerrit workflows seem ideal for these types of collaborative projects but I really don’t know; thus the question marks. My conclusion from your feedback is that a Google Docs-like WebUI is a requirement and my question switches to when is it appropriate to peak under the covers and see the plumbing.

pfkurtz 6y ago

Really, shouldn't org-mode be taught to toddlers?