Python, the "second best language for everything", has had a huge impact for teaching people programming. Beginners can do useful and interesting things and solve real problems after a few hours of learning.
And yet the number of times I've seen beginners completely discouraged or even give up programming forever because they have conda and pip and brew and pyenv installed and can't run a basic script after 4 hours of trying because environment mess-up is ridiculous.
The value in a programming environment that literally just works and can give you a functioning web app (the modern very basic I/O) in less than a minute is a huge value add for education.
I'm a complete convert. I've worked with Amasad to write tutorials[0] showing how easy repl is to use and these have become some of my most popular tutorials.
Absolutely incredible that repl.it has done so much in such a short time and with a very small team. All the best for the future!
And yet the number of times I've seen beginners completely discouraged or even give up programming forever because they have conda and pip and brew and pyenv installed and can't run a basic script after 4 hours of trying because environment mess-up is ridiculous.
The value in a programming environment that literally just works and can give you a functioning web app (the modern very basic I/O) in less than a minute is a huge value add for education.
I'm a complete convert. I've worked with Amasad to write tutorials[0] showing how easy repl is to use and these have become some of my most popular tutorials.
Absolutely incredible that repl.it has done so much in such a short time and with a very small team. All the best for the future!
[0] https://www.codementor.io/garethdwyer/posts