I tried unsuccessfully to get a copy of repl.it up and running, but I ultimately figured out a way to do synchronous stdin on my own (by routing through a node.js server), and I integrated Python as well by hacking a copy of Skulpt.

Python Tutor is really cool and ultimately I’d like to integrate something like that, but I need to get a few things in place first.

I’m hoping to have the Catalyst IDE up and ready for public use within the next few weeks, at which point you guys can see what it is that I’m trying to do.

Hoping they can do the original justice if they get round to the sequel they keep talking about.

Want me to punch-a-size your face, for free?!

@Ignacio – I haven’t dealt with that problem yet, as soon as I do I will let you know!

http://armorgames.com/play/6061/light-bot-20

You should checkout Cargo-Bot – it is a free iPad app written in Codea that I’m using with my daughters as an intro to programming (they are 5 and 7). It teaches a lot of cool concepts using a simple mechanism of dragging commands to write a program to move boxes around a screen.

Here is the url:

http://twolivesleft.com/CargoBot/

no not really. i mean that you take your personal laptop (i assume theres no kid on that one) and fire up a server vm on it and then let the laptops connect via wifi to your local server. if you have software like connectify you wouldnt even need a wlan ap.

You could just use a “dumb” php server to do the file saving (or use localStorage for an offline version).

—

If you guys liked Looper, you should check out Brick – same director (Rian Johnson) and lead actor (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Another of my favorite “under-seen” movies is Inside Man, it’s about a bank robbery but very much a cerebral thriller with an excellent cast.

Anyway, I already went ahead and bought two of the Verizon Jetpack portable hotspots and they worked like a charm. Each can serve 10 devices and all in they only cost me ($170 + $40 / month), which is in the budget considering Catalyst is $40 / month per kid.

Actually, maybe movies with fewer locations and more talking are better in some ways? The man from Earth happens around one house. 12 angry men – one room. Hitchcock’s rear window – one flat. Cosmopolis – one limo. Cube – very limited in a way. All pretty good.
(did I miss some other significant single-location productions?)

Greg Egan is awesome. I especially liked “Diaspora”.

If you want to see something really interesting, watch “The Man From Earth”. It doesn’t look like sci-fi – it’s present-day people just talking in a room – but it does take your mind for quite a trip.

(Oh, and BTW, I think it’s Janet Napolitano, head of DHS, who famously doesn’t use e-mail… When it comes to SCOTUS, I’d assume hardly any of the Justices uses one.)

I realize that I may be reinventing the wheel to some degree, but everything I’ve looked at is at best a 70% solution and I really want a 100% percent solution. The good news is that it’s really not that big of a problem. Anyway, I’ve been stricken with the madness so I have to build it regardless, otherwise my head might explode. 😉

But I do very much appreciate the suggestion.

In short what you get is:
– web-based editor for either code only, or “literate programming” environment – which means you can put blocks of markdown text (that get ignored during execution) in between blocks of code – may be useful for you to put additional instructions / description in them
– running the code using the run button only – all blocks get evaluated and computed results of all steps are shown
– no filesystem operations – everyone can see just named “notebooks” which are just json files on the drive, so you can share / copy some template for each student
– graphics – although it’s mainly integrated with packages like pylab and scipy (maths oriented), you can create your own drawing context abstraction or load images if needed (but hey – graphs are cool too!)
– the server itself is running in python so there are not many moving parts – server receives the code, executes it and sends back the result
– you can evaluate everything, or one block at a time
– exception handling is built-in in a pretty good way

What you don’t get:
– standard input – there’s just no interaction while the program is running as far as I can tell, but because you can have multiple code blocks you could simulate the input by having it in a different block at the top and providing your own “line reading” function for it

For actually running the server, you can use another laptop – create a local network and start it up on your own machine, then point kids at your local address – no access to the internet needed. (just make sure it’s virtualised, in case one of the students decides to try if os.system(‘rm -rf /’) does something cool 😉 )

It seems like what you’re trying to write on your own right now, so I hope it saves you some time. (and sanity once you get into the problem of sandboxing environments)