Friday, November 22, 2013

Why use Fiddles to teaching programming

  1. No more IDEs to figure out or decide on (every CS instructor and developer has an opinion on IDEs. Great flamewars have started this way.) 
  2. No more complex workflows like requiring source file names must follow a certain pattern, save into a specific folder, etc.
  3. No more projects submitted via a USB drive; If you're still doing this as a CS instructor now, change careers because you suck
  4. No more SDK installations or copying binaries for specific programming languages
  5. No more fighting a version control system; Let's face it teaching programming to freshmen or sophomores is hard enough and you still want to muddy the waters with a VCS?
  6. (some) Fiddles are collaborative; 2 or more students working on the same source file which makes for some interesting group project options.
  7. Fiddles can be shared via social networking; we already share too much of our personal life online why not your code?
  8. Fiddles are bookmark-able so they can be submitted as is and you can quickly see if it can run or not
  9. Fiddles are available for every language (some examples)
  10. And yes all of them are free
Fiddles should change the way how we teaching programming to all levels, if you disagree, tell me I'm interested in hearing what argument you come up with.

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