[flagged]
Dude puts in the work and get's low value comments like this? Breck you need to learn some self awareness bro.
Show HN: Futurecoder – A free interactive Python course for coding beginners
31–40 of 85 posts
Re: Show HN: Futurecoder – A free interactive Python course for coding beginners
#32The only downside is theres multiple ways to reach the same outcome, and unless you program it exactly what you're looking for it gives a false negative that the solution isn't correct
That's not really true. For the actual exercises where you need to solve a problem yourself, the system only tests that the code produces the correct output. It doesn't require you to use a specific approach, so there are infinite possibilities, although it may forbid certain approaches that go against what the current section is trying to teach.
There are many steps that do require entering exact code, but that's because in those cases the code itself is the whole point, not just the output. In most cases they're in places where new concepts are being introduced, so jumping to exercises wouldn't make sense. Often you're even being asked to enter code that does something 'wrong' so you can see common mistakes in action.
Steps that require exact code are always explicitly labeled as such under the 'Requirements'. In most cases the code that needs to entered is given exactly in the text in one piece. When it isn't, the Requirements will always contain extra clarification for the instructions. And if that isn't enough, it's still always possible to look at the solution, although for that kind of step it shouldn't typically be needed.
Your comment sounds very similar to the most common kind of feedback I used to get from users who found the instructions unclear and got stuck. I recently made a major update to the user interface to solve this problem, including the stuff in the paragraph above. If you've used futurecoder before it's possible you haven't experienced this yourself. If you can't see it right now, you may have old content cached, hard refresh the page in your browser. Also, the new features haven't been translated yet so they're only available on the English site.
Re: Show HN: Futurecoder – A free interactive Python course for coding beginners
#33I 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 i…
The buttons on the landing page are:
- Start learning (see the tutorial content)
or
- Just code (you don't need to learn, you just want to use the editor/shell as a simple scratchpad/playground with some enhancements)
The links are working as intended, but maybe I need to make them clearer.
Re: Show HN: Futurecoder – A free interactive Python course for coding beginners
#34I would love to see something like this but for c++. I'm going to teach my kids programming but I want to go in this order c++ -> java, javascript/typescript, python -> rust, go -> perl, bash
Do you hate your kids or something? Maybe you want them to never want to program.
Re: Show HN: Futurecoder – A free interactive Python course for coding beginners
#35Awesome! will try this out with my 10 year old and 6 year old who I want to get started with coding, as I'm not so keen on kid-focused options which abstract the actual coding away with "cute" visual representations (conditionals, loops, variables are not difficult concepts to grasp). IMO Ruby is the best language for teaching coding to kids (I taught it to my daughter when she was 10, years ago, she's now a SWE with…
Thanks! Great job teaching your daughter so well at such a young age!
> but there are more tools for Python these days
I can't comment on what exists or what's possible in Ruby, but futurecoder does indeed have a lot of specific magical features that I wouldn't know how to replicate in any other language.
Re: Show HN: Futurecoder – A free interactive Python course for coding beginners
#36This is great. Would love to see this in Spanish. I’m a fluent speaker but have never talked about code in Spanish, however I’d be up to the challenge of helping translate
Re: Show HN: Futurecoder – A free interactive Python course for coding beginners
#37I would love to see something like this but for c++. I'm going to teach my kids programming but I want to go in this order c++ -> java, javascript/typescript, python -> rust, go -> perl, bash
a very strange order - i really think that C++ is unsuitable as a first language, though it makes a good second or third one.
Re: Show HN: Futurecoder – A free interactive Python course for coding beginners
#38It looks cool. You'll forgive me for not trying every example. However, 1. It doesn't seem to work in Microsoft Edge when the default Enhanced Security is turned on. You might need to ask people to turn that off. I'm not sure about a workaround. It panics with insufficient stack space. 2. How does it pay its own bills? If you get bored with it, what will happen to it? I'm sure Codecademy has a revenue strategy. Just…
1. Thanks, I've never heard about this, will definitely need to check it out. Opened https://github.com/alexmojaki/futurecoder/issues/418
2. Because it all runs in the browser (thanks to Pyodide) it's just some static files, so it's extremely cheap to host. I can keep it going long after I'm bored with it. If I die or something and the site literally goes down, someone else can easily host it. There's already a slightly customised mirror of the French site hosted here: https://futurecoder.forge.aeif.fr/
Re: Show HN: Futurecoder – A free interactive Python course for coding beginners
#39Related:
Show HN: Futurecoder – A free online interactive Python course - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28737779 - Oct 2021 (24 comments)
Re: Show HN: Futurecoder – A free interactive Python course for coding beginners
#40Earlier 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.
> simplifying the language and some of the conceptual stuff
This might work to an extent, but I think it makes more sense to choose a resource that's actually targeted at kids so that it's holistically and fundamentally designed to be the best thing possible for kids. That means features like simplifying the language itself (like Hedy or Scratch) or a game like https://codecombat.com/ to make it fun.