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GitHub goes to school

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Re: GitHub goes to school

#31

Post by Fomite »

guptaneil wrote: post #15
martindale wrote: post #11

Fantastic seeing this initiative by GitHub. Though I'd prefer an open source solution that they could host themselves, this is a good step in the right direction. I also don't believe Git is the right tool for this problem. Educators need something tailored much more specifically, and one that reduces the complexity of branching and merging along the way. There's a space here.

I'm pretty sure this initiative is geared towards CS students/teachers looking to host their class projects, not humanities teachers looking to host their coursework. In that light, there is no need to reduce the complexity of branching and merging because those are real-world skills that CS students need to learn. As for a VCS that helps non-technical teachers manage their content, I absolutely agree that there is s…

There is a vast gulf between "CS students/teachers" and "humanities teachers looking to host their coursework". Like, the entire landscape of computational science, statistics, anything with "quantitative" in front of its name...

Re: GitHub goes to school

#32

Post by al2o3cr »

martindale wrote: post #11

Fantastic seeing this initiative by GitHub. Though I'd prefer an open source solution that they could host themselves, this is a good step in the right direction. I also don't believe Git is the right tool for this problem. Educators need something tailored much more specifically, and one that reduces the complexity of branching and merging along the way. There's a space here.

"Though I'd prefer an open source solution that they could host themselves"

This is not the only time that this has come up, and somehow I doubt most educators share HN's open-source zeal - most of them I've worked with want to GET TO WORK, not spend hours doodling with "self-hosted" software.

Re: GitHub goes to school

#33

Post by Fomite »

theboss wrote: post #27

Github, I use you for all my \LaTeX papers, programming assignments, masters projects, whatever else. It is really helpful. But I don't like that I can only have 5 private repos. Making my work public could be an honor-code violation and a violation of the professors trust, that I won't make solutions available to their projects. On top of that, I'm usually working on more than 5 projects at any given time. Now that…

Suggestion: If you're part of a professor's group, a lab, etc. they also have group pages. This is what I used to boost the private repos for "All the work in Professor Y's lab".

Re: GitHub goes to school

#34

Post by Fomite »

robszumski wrote: post #28
theboss wrote: post #27

Github, I use you for all my \LaTeX papers, programming assignments, masters projects, whatever else. It is really helpful. But I don't like that I can only have 5 private repos. Making my work public could be an honor-code violation and a violation of the professors trust, that I won't make solutions available to their projects. On top of that, I'm usually working on more than 5 projects at any given time. Now that…

You can have a private repo called writing with a folder for each project. Not elegant but it works...

This too. I have an "Archive" folder, and before that one called "Dissertation" which was in reality like, 8 different projects.

Re: GitHub goes to school

#35

Post by theboss »

Fomite wrote: post #34
robszumski wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have a private repo called writing with a folder for each project. Not elegant but it works...

This too. I have an "Archive" folder, and before that one called "Dissertation" which was in reality like, 8 different projects.

This is a good solution. Have a archive private repo that everything I'm done with goes in. Perfect.

Re: GitHub goes to school

#36

Post by tsm »

theboss wrote: post #27

Github, I use you for all my \LaTeX papers, programming assignments, masters projects, whatever else. It is really helpful. But I don't like that I can only have 5 private repos. Making my work public could be an honor-code violation and a violation of the professors trust, that I won't make solutions available to their projects. On top of that, I'm usually working on more than 5 projects at any given time. Now that…

I just use Bitbucket—unlimited private repos with caps on how many users are allowed to use each one. For one-person projects it's ideal. Github's main value proposition over Bitbucket is its community...but that's a moot point for private repos.

Re: GitHub goes to school

#37

Post by my3681 »

I work at a development house at the University of Alabama, and we have found that our free GitHub micro account has been a wonderful gateway drug of sorts for learning git. But, having just moved over from an SVN set up to an in-house git system (RhodeCode), I would echo the others who have said that other git tools are better for us than GitHub for teaching git.

Without a doubt, GitHub's educational accounts have been great for our undergraduate students because they have exposed them to great open source code and a community that is excited about development. In short, we have found that the intangible gains have far outweighed the tangible gains of a few private repos. Kudos to the GitHub staff for continuing I make development and collaboration fun and easy.

Re: GitHub goes to school

#38

Post by hawkharris »

Tech companies that offer discounts usually cater to college students. What about young professionals who want to continue learning?

Most students receive financial support from their parents and have ample disposable income for products like GitHub [0,1,2]. Recent grads who want to keep learning about technology are more in need of discounts.

I'm not discrediting GitHub's campaign — I'm happy that the company is reaching out to students. It's just that the trend toward offering students discounts is somewhat misguided and shortsighted.

[0] http://news.byu.edu/archive12-apr-payingforcollege.aspx [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/15/education/parents-financia... [2] http://www.usatodayeducate.com/staging/index.php/choice/who-...

Re: GitHub goes to school

#39

Post by rhizome »

hawkharris wrote: post #38

Tech companies that offer discounts usually cater to college students. What about young professionals who want to continue learning? Most students receive financial support from their parents and have ample disposable income for products like GitHub [0,1,2]. Recent grads who want to keep learning about technology are more in need of discounts. I'm not discrediting GitHub's campaign — I'm happy that the company is rea…

What kind of discount are you thinking of? It's already free for as many public repos as you want.

"Young professionals who want to continue learning" implies the graduate has a job.

Re: GitHub goes to school

#40

Post by ianstormtaylor »

srean wrote: post #23
Zikes wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that going a bit overboard in an educational setting, though? Seems to me like it'd be like showing up for a drivers ed class and spending the first semester learning about the history of internal combustion engines. Sometimes it's best to start with something that transparently "just works", make the students aware of other options like gitlab, and let them explore those if they wish.

Depends on what the end goal of the education system is: to make you a driver/chauffeur or to make you someone who is going to design the car of the future. How to stage and sequence the exposure to the details is indeed important. I am not advocating exposure to the details right away, but the option has to be available at a reasonable price (be it in money, or in time). There is also the "teach a person to fish" th…

That assumes that everyone who was using GitHub for hosting their classwork is engineer capable of hosting their own Git server. What if they are working on frontend HTML/CSS things? or just learning Python? There are lots of valid uses for version control that don't mean you already have the ability to even try to host your own VCS.

No one argues that you need to have people host their own web server to start learning how to write Javascript. In fact, most would argue against hosting your own that early on. It's not beneficial, and more likely to end up tangential annoyances than solving the problems that matter for the person's skill level.

Just because someone teaches you a different part of the stack first doesn't mean they are handing out fish...

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