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Show HN: Futurecoder – A free interactive Python course for coding beginners

futurecoder.io

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Re: Show HN: Futurecoder – A free interactive Python course for coding beginners

#21

Post by breck »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #8
breck wrote: post #3

[flagged]

This is a strange interpretation of the word 'free'. If you mean 'gratis', it definitely is free of charge. If you mean 'libre', it is MIT licensed, so you can do whatever you want with it. If you mean some other kind of 'freedom', you should probably clarify...

If an idea has a "license", then it is not free. It is not libre. #LicensesAreForLosers

Being for licenses, no matter how permissive, is being in support of the idea of Intellectual Slavery. Public domain or it's not 100% free.

Hopefully in the future we'll pass a Constitutional Amendment, and end Intellectual Slavery as we did its superset https://breckyunits.com/the-intellectual-freedom-amendment.h...

Re: Show HN: Futurecoder – A free interactive Python course for coding beginners

#22

Post by insane_dreamer »

samwillis wrote: post #13
dndn1 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For 8yo, maybe you can consider bringing her through Hedy: https://hedy.org/ It's gradual (starts easy but limited, then with progress through levels gets more precise and powerful), and I read that it gets to full blown Python programming. Theres an excellent talk on the approach by the author: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fmF7HpU_-9k Edit: +Hedy is designed with kids in mind, as opposed to adults, which I believe…

Hedy looks really good, thanks for the tip! Yes, Future Coder is clearly aimed at adults or older teenagers, and looks really good for them. That was mostly the point of my question about user created tutorials. Using the current tutorial as a basis, but simplifying the language and some of the conceptual stuff would make something that could work for younger kids.

I'm thinking of going through it with my kids, and then I can explain what they don't understand.

Re: Show HN: Futurecoder – A free interactive Python course for coding beginners

#23

Post by srvmshr »

nightski wrote: post #12

Does anyone know a good resource for someone who was very familiar with older Python (early 2.x) and would like to get up to speed on the latest Python along with current/best practices?

In no particular order or preference:

* Think Python 2nd Edition (or How to think like a computer scientist. More recently, "Learn python the right way" based on same book.)

* Fluent Python 2nd Edition, Ramalho

* Python Distilled, Dave Baezley

Re: Show HN: Futurecoder – A free interactive Python course for coding beginners

#24

Post by btdmaster »

XCabbage wrote: post #14
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a strange interpretation of the word 'free'. If you mean 'gratis', it definitely is free of charge. If you mean 'libre', it is MIT licensed, so you can do whatever you want with it. If you mean some other kind of 'freedom', you should probably clarify...

I think the parent's point is that you can't quite do "whatever you want" with it anywhere in the world, at least until Alex dies, because in some countries authors have inalienable moral rights that cannot be waived by any agreement or license. For instance, if you go to France and distort or mutilate Alex's work in a way that harms his reputation or honour, he will be able to sue you for it, and no possible license…

Apparently there are similar laws elsewhere, except unlike in France, they apply perpetually. (As per Wikipedia/Moral Rights.)

Re: Show HN: Futurecoder – A free interactive Python course for coding beginners

#27

Post by alexmojaki »

samwillis wrote: post #2

This looks really good, going through the first couple of tasks it seems well considered. I'm introducing my 8yo daughter to programming at the moment, she is beginning to play around with Scratch. I'm keeping my eye out some something closer to proper coding though. I think this may be a little too far at the moment, but I may try her out on it with me sitting next to her and see how she gets on! Is there any way fo…

> Is there any way for users to construct their own multiple stage tutorials?

I really hope some kind of GUI to do that can exist one day, but it's definitely a complicated feature that I'd need help from contributors to build. Same for graphical output.

> (It looks like we can do single questions)

I think you're talking about the question wizard. That's for helping people to write good quality questions about their own struggles to post on StackOverflow and similar sites. It's not for making 'challenges' for others to solve.

> Incredibly generous of you to make it open source!

Thank you! I'm really trying to improve the state of education and make the world a better place. I hope that in addition to directly helping users, I can inspire other educators, raise the bar, and help them build similar products. To this end, futurecoder is powered by many open source libraries that I've created which are designed to also be useful in their own right:

Debuggers: these are integrated in the site but also usable in any environment:

- https://github.com/alexmojaki/birdseye

- https://github.com/alexmojaki/snoop

- https://github.com/alexmojaki/cheap_repr (not a debugger, but used by the above two as well as directly by futurecoder)

Tracebacks:

- https://github.com/alexmojaki/stack_data (this is also what powers the new IPython tracebacks)

- https://github.com/alexmojaki/executing (allows highlighting the exact spot where the error occurred, but also enables loads of other magical applications)

- https://github.com/alexmojaki/pure_eval

You can see a nicer presentation (with pictures) of the above as well as other projects of mine on my profile https://github.com/alexmojaki

Libraries which I specifically extracted from futurecoder to help build another similar educational site https://papyros.dodona.be/?locale=en (which does have a canvas output, at least for matplotlib):

- https://github.com/alexmojaki/sync-message (allows synchronous communication with web workers to make input() work properly)

- https://github.com/alexmojaki/comsync

- https://github.com/alexmojaki/pyodide-worker-runner

- https://github.com/alexmojaki/python_runner

Re: Show HN: Futurecoder – A free interactive Python course for coding beginners

#28

Post by atleta »

I clicked "just code" on the landing page and it took me to a page where the left pane showed an empty (black) terminal and the right one a python shell. Looking at the developer tools I saw a message in reponse to my hello world input saying that I should type 1+2. But it was never displayed.

Then based on this hint, clicking around I managed to reveal the tutorial (showing up on the right). So it seems that there is a bug in the navigation or maybe the "just code" link on the landing points to the wrong place.

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