FeetWetCoding: Trying to make learning C++ a little more fun!

[Tomaz Canabrava]

2012/8/22 Robert Holder <robert at feetwetcoding.com>:
> On 8/22/2012 8:24 AM, Tomaz Canabrava wrote:
>>
>> 2012/8/22 Robert Holder <robert at feetwetcoding.com>:
>>>
>>> Thanks Tomaz for taking a look at it, and for your comments!
>>>
>>> Where you say "try to move your app to KDE-Edu", I'm afraid I don't
>>> really
>>> understand what that entails.  Maybe I should explain how I got to this
>>> list.  I met Alexandra Weisse at Qt Dev Days last year, and described our
>>> project to her, and she suggested I might come here and mention my
>>> project,
>>> since you guys are involved in educational software.  However I didn't
>>> want
>>> to mention our project here while it was in such bad shape--if you think
>>> it
>>> is confusing now, you should have seen it before!  :-D
>>
>> by "Move your project to KDE-Edu" I mean move the project to KDE's
>> infrastructure, with a release schedule of 6 months per version, in
>> the scieitific educational apps.
>
> ah ok I see, thank you.
>
>>
>>> So, I'm a little embarrassed to have to admit that I don't really
>>> understand
>>> KDE-Edu very well, in terms of how apps are structured here.
>>
>> We have apps for pre-school, school, college and university. your fits
>> in college and university =)
>
> yes this is our view also.  Sorry I was talking about the infrastructural
> part of it, that you referred to earlier,  I understand what you meant now.
>
>
>>
>>> Also, we have
>>> only done straight Qt development, and have not used the KDE libraries
>>> before.  Finally, one of our priority goals is to try to make
>>> FeetWetCoding
>>> run on every platform: Linux, Mac OS X and Windows, which the Qt SDK
>>> allows
>>> us to do. KDE would limit us to Linux only, although ensuring that our
>>> project runs well on Linux is definitely a priority for us.
>>
>> Wrong assumption, KDE runs well on OS X and Windows too, it's not a
>> linux-only project. how can we state that we love freedom if we limit
>> one to just one platform? =), Besides that, KDElibs can be tough as a
>> layer on top of Qt.
>
> cool, I didn't know that!  Good info.
>
>>> We also get the sense that our project is confusing for people who are
>>> trying to get into it, and we've tried to make the documentation as
>>> complete
>>> as we can, but that sort of ends up being even more overwhelming!  We're
>>> not
>>> really sure how to fix it... neither of us are technical writers by
>>> trade!
>>
>> Me neither, but for example, I know from your fist page that your app
>> is to help learning C++, then I read the tutorials and I didn't see
>> the usage of your app, but QtCreator. maybe what's complex to
>> understand in your app is that you use it to test the app done in
>> another IDE, *maybe* if it was everything-integrated, it could look
>> less confusing ( eg, by compilling and running the app at runtime,
>> instead of asking the user to do the app in QtCreator / another IDE,
>> and *then* launching your app to try. ), do less, learn more.
>
> Ah, OK I see what you mean.  In our case, the learning environment *is* the
> IDE.  That is intentional.  IDEs like Qt Creator are what many professional
> software developers use, and one of our design goals is to try to help the
> beginning programmer get comfortable with using an IDE from the beginning.
> This is actually a controversial subject, and there are many people out
> there who believe the opposite is a better idea: that throwing an IDE at
> beginners is just too overwhelming.  We may be wrong, and they may be right!
> :-)  However there are already online tutorials for learning C++ from the
> command line (i.e. *not* IDE-based) and part of what we wanted to accomplish
> was to provide a learning solution that *is* IDE-based--to try to address a
> need that we believe has not yet been met elsewhere.
>
> In any case, this is the design path we have chosen, and it is integral to
> our whole project, and teaching syllabus.  Redesigning our executable as you
> describe essentially means we would be writing an IDE ourselves, and there
> is already a perfectly good IDE available--Qt Creator!  :-)

Yes - QtCreator is a good IDE, but I think you understand my point on
the 'confusing' part. :)
but QtCreator ( and KDevelop ) do accept plugins, so you could
redesign a bit of your software ( not all of it, since the vast
majority of it would be the same ) to make it plug-itself on QtCreator
and KDevelop. then you would have a teaching tool inside of the IDE,
that sounds cool?

>>
>>> :-(  We'd be happy to hear any specific observations you might have about
>>> what was confusing for you if you have time.  We've been so close to this
>>> code and documentation for so long that we can't really see it
>>> objectively
>>> anymore!  :-)
>>>
>>> Thanks again very much for taking the time to look at our humble little
>>> project!
>>
>> Best Regards,
>> Tomaz Canabrava
>>
> Thanks again so much for you time, Tomaz!  Your feedback is very helpful and
> much appreciated.   We've been to a number of different venues, and even
> meetups with local teachers, a linux user group and so on, and nobody ever
> seems to know quite what to do with us.  :-) Particularly your comments on
> the IDE part being confusing, that is something important that we are going
> to have to think more about. Thanks!

Thanks for your time, and everyone that helps improving teaching
programming is much appreciated by me.
Tomaz

> Regards,
> Robert
>
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