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That's awesome, but I think it would be much more accessible for newbies if they included download links and installation steps. I have friends who might be int
by peripitea 15y ago
That's awesome, but I think it would be much more accessible for newbies if they included download links and installation steps. I have friends who might be interested in this for whom just the installation could be a daunting hurdle.
- jwallaceparker 15y agoAgree. To me the biggest hurdle in programming is not the programming itself but the sys-admin effort to setup a development environment.
- cantbecool 15y agoI know this is a shot in the dark, but if you're a Rails developer, use Heroku. It takes a lot of pain out of an applications deployment.
- latortuga 15y agodevelopment environment, not deployment. You're certainly right about deployment but it's sort of a non-sequitor to the post you're responding to :)
- thomaslangston 15y agohttp://www.python.org/download/ http://www.python.org/download/
- peripitea 15y agoRight, but do you understand how unintelligible that page is for most people? My dad is smart enough that I'm sure he could learn how to program, but I'm almost certain that he wouldn't know what to do on that page. Also, I think last time I encouraged a non-compsci friend to install python, they had issues with the PATH not being set right, and quickly lost interest. Compare that to the Firefox download page, where it auto-detects everything it needs to know about your computer and gives you one simple, unambiguous giant "download me" button that just works. If this was a conversion funnel, python would be losing most of their money (i.e. potential users) at this step.
- ramblerman 15y agonavigating the internet and reading through some basic documentation seems like a pretty basic requirement for a 'programmer'. It might be unintelligible at first, but a little struggle is a better teacher than constant hand holding. The old cruel IRC days of RTFM made me a better, more independent problem solver.
- VikingCoder 15y agohttp://codepad.org/ http://codepad.org/ Click on Python. I'm not sure how many of the Khan Academy tutorials you could get through...
- llimllib 15y agoStrangely, he has a video that describes just that, but it's on vimeo: http://vimeo.com/28743348 http://vimeo.com/28743348
- jQueryIsAwesome 15y agoJavascript FTW, a text editor and a browser and you are already programming!