suggestion: GitPod as a coding environment

[colemickens]

Hi! I was poking around the resources/environments and had to take a second to geek-out / evangelize another option -> https://www.gitpod.io/

GitPod:

• based on an open source core (Eclipse Theia) (the thing I'm really most excited about -- in fact, I've specifically always dreamed of it being used for this exact sort of teaching scenario)
• very generous free tier
• full access inside an isolated environment (full root, git, ssh, whatever)
• (varying degree of) VS Code extension support
• leverages Docker for making the environment extensible

GitPod allows a git repo to declare a Docker environment, and so thus a Git repo can become instantly clone-able and build/publish-able by anyone simply by using GitPod in any browser.

Some folks might prefer to build an impactful product without needing to know dozens of specific tools, whereas others might want to know those tools deeply and/or work in the dev tooling space. So, depending on what the mentee wants to focus on, the mentor could take over declaring the full GitPod environment with any/all of the tooling necessary for the curriculum and/or eventual passion project. This would remove all of the potential overhead of the mentee needing to setup a local environment.

Screenshot of the Curriculum open in it, as an example, as well as showing you can get root. Projects can easily add a config file that makes any sort of tooling available to the GitPod environment.

[colemickens]

Depending on my mentees desires/needs/goals, I may give this a shot, and if so, I could document it and also provide a starter repo that could be used side-by-side with the curriculum....

[ashley]

👋🏼 @colemickens. Looks very neat and would love to know if you were able to try this out. It looks like it provides almost an identical UI as VS Code. IMO, I've used Glitch to do pair-programming and deploy projects quickly. However, this looks like an environment that works with Python and possibly React Native, which are beyond Glitch's capabilities.

From past mentorship experiences, we've learned that teaching mentees to use their local environment helps simplify the concept of servers and web page rendering. However, if a mentee spends more time setting up their environment, it would be better to use a virtual environment like this, Repl.it, or Glitch.

Looking forward to hearing if you've been able to test this out. Wouldn't mind adding this to the environment page 😄