4 ms·

At my old university one of the intro classes moved all their students to Replit. Which might have been fine in isolation, but I think it created a year of stud

At my old university one of the intro classes moved all their students to Replit. Which might have been fine in isolation, but I think it created a year of students who struggled endlessly to use gcc, Makefiles, debuggers, or local tooling in general. Starting your CS journey with the local command line seems to put you into the perfect headspace right off the bat, even if it is a little slower to get going.

ethbr1 3y ago
IMHO, the ugliest part of local environments is the OS, and fighting with interactions. But VMs can abstract away most of this, especially in a learning environment where performance isn't a primary goal. Then you can have a known-good set of instructions that doesn't have to include messing with whatever Apple/Microsoft/Ubuntu changed recently.
- mattmcknight 3y ago
  Docker was getting us pretty close to this until the M1 Macs came out and our Intel CPU presumptions blew up.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - api 3y ago
    Docker has plenty of ARM images and I think they also have built in Rosetta support now to run x64 albeit with lower performance.
- mechanicker 3y ago
  Well, those OS differences taught us to write (or strive to) portable code. It also taught me to better appreciate strengths in different operating systems over the years.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    Absolutely! But in a learning format, the student probably needs to be focusing on the task at hand. Learning to paper over OS errata isn't as generally useful as, say, groking multithreaded coding models. Yes, there are environment quirks. Yes, you'll have to deal with them. Yes, you can look up documentation when you run into those situations.
samsartor 3y ago
Reflecting a little bit more I don't think it was replit's fault, per-say. But that change should have been made together with a larger adjustment to the program. Like adding a class/unit in the style of [the missing semester](https://missing.csail.mit.edu/ https://missing.csail.mit.edu/) to make sure people came away with a good range of intuitions.
- stevekemp 3y ago
  For the future the term you probably intended to use was "per se" - a Latin phrase meaning "by itself" or "in itself".
redserk 3y ago
There's a lot of magic behind being able to write basic code and see the output on the screen. I hate setting up environments, even with a folder of templates I've assembled over the years. The most frustrating barrier to get to the "magic" of seeing something happen is figuring out the proper/correct way to structure a project. Towards the end of intro courses seems like an appropriate time to start bringing up tooling.
blibble 3y ago
sounds great from Replit's point of view they donate a couple of thousand dollars and in return get a CS class that will go out into the world completely dependent on them

ethbr1 3y ago

IMHO, the ugliest part of local environments is the OS, and fighting with interactions. But VMs can abstract away most of this, especially in a learning environment where performance isn't a primary goal. Then you can have a known-good set of instructions that doesn't have to include messing with whatever Apple/Microsoft/Ubuntu changed recently.

mattmcknight 3y ago
Docker was getting us pretty close to this until the M1 Macs came out and our Intel CPU presumptions blew up.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- api 3y ago
  Docker has plenty of ARM images and I think they also have built in Rosetta support now to run x64 albeit with lower performance.
mechanicker 3y ago
Well, those OS differences taught us to write (or strive to) portable code. It also taught me to better appreciate strengths in different operating systems over the years.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  Absolutely! But in a learning format, the student probably needs to be focusing on the task at hand. Learning to paper over OS errata isn't as generally useful as, say, groking multithreaded coding models. Yes, there are environment quirks. Yes, you'll have to deal with them. Yes, you can look up documentation when you run into those situations.

samsartor 3y ago

Reflecting a little bit more I don't think it was replit's fault, per-say. But that change should have been made together with a larger adjustment to the program. Like adding a class/unit in the style of [the missing semester](https://missing.csail.mit.edu/ https://missing.csail.mit.edu/) to make sure people came away with a good range of intuitions.

stevekemp 3y ago
For the future the term you probably intended to use was "per se" - a Latin phrase meaning "by itself" or "in itself".

redserk 3y ago

There's a lot of magic behind being able to write basic code and see the output on the screen. I hate setting up environments, even with a folder of templates I've assembled over the years. The most frustrating barrier to get to the "magic" of seeing something happen is figuring out the proper/correct way to structure a project. Towards the end of intro courses seems like an appropriate time to start bringing up tooling.

blibble 3y ago

sounds great from Replit's point of view they donate a couple of thousand dollars and in return get a CS class that will go out into the world completely dependent on them