Would it be better to do all of the hands-on coding in Python instead of C/C++/Fortran? Can we treat all of the concepts we're interested in presenting in Python? Will our students be sufficiently comfortable with Python? (To what extent are they comfortable with C/C++/Fortran?)
Some potential positives:
A single code base (right now we support a C-like C++ and have a Fortran version that we haven't fully adopted yet).
Possibly easier for students from an infrastructure perspective?
Are students more likely to have Python already installed than a classic development environment?
Are they more likely to have it locally (i.e. on a laptop they'd bring to the tutorial)? Remote works, but local tends to be simpler and more convenient, for Python or compiled code.
Potential negatives:
We lose the opportunity to provide examples of using tools that students might want to use in their regular work, which for many will be using compiled languages.
On the other hand, we can show them equivalent tools in Python. Is that sufficient? Or would it be better to show them in C/C++/Fortran? And if so, does that require code bases in three different languages with three different sets of tools?
At present, the only tools we're using are for code coverage. And part of that is codecov.io, which also works for Python.
Would it be better to do all of the hands-on coding in Python instead of C/C++/Fortran? Can we treat all of the concepts we're interested in presenting in Python? Will our students be sufficiently comfortable with Python? (To what extent are they comfortable with C/C++/Fortran?)
Some potential positives:
Potential negatives:
Further thoughts welcome.