I started to work on a web application the other day. It's nothing special but if I ever finish it, it will be a pretty complete project. The backend will be a REST API and I'm planning on writing the frontend in Clojurescript. The problem with developing a web application like this is that you can't really write the front end until you have enough of the backend to provide data.

Org-mode is my markup of choice. I spend the vast majority of my time working on text files working in org-mode. Since GitHUb started rendering org-mode files in their site I've also used org-mode for things like Readme files in my projects. I even force it on my students at times. When I make an assignment, I seed it with an org-mode file that they have to modify - that is - fill in things like their names, group members etc.

I've been wanting to check out lsp-mode under Emacs for a while now. LSP stands for Language Protocol Service. The idea is that you have a standard interface between your editor and some language server. If you program in multiple languages and each has an LSP server you end up, in theory, with a simpler configuration and a consistent interface. This certainly sounds more appealing than how we did it in the old days where you have some ad hoc configuraiton for each language you work in.

With ISTE ending, the next big event for CS treachers is the annual CSTA Conference. I first attended two years ago in Baltimore. Last year the conference, in Omaha was bigger and better in every way imaginable. I expect this year to be the best yet. I don't go to a lot of conferences so I don't have much to compare CSTA with but I like the fact that it's is about half the size of SIGCSE.

One of Emacs power features that I've never quite gotten into is dired, the Directory Editor. I've already done a video on the package. It's really cool and I do use it at times but I still haven't started using it for my day to day. Well, I just started using a couple of packages that might change this. They're part of a set of dired addons that you can check out at the dired hacks page.

Since Hunter uses C++ as it's core language, I haven't used Java much in the past three years. That's going to change pretty soon. Once we start offering our CS teacher Certificate and Masters programs I'll once again start teaching with Java as that's one of the langauges that we want to prepare our teachers with. That means deciding on a set of tools and so I've been spending time evaluating Java programming environments with an eye on the beginner since not only do the teachers I work with have to be comfortable with the tool but more importantly they will have to be able to support the tool for all of their students.

It's been an amazingly unproductive weekend. Mostly because I've been sick with the flu. It sucks but since the rest of the family's away anway at least I'm not making everyone miserable. I did manage to stage my next couple of classes and figured that writing this post wouldn't take too much energy since it's mostly a video. Earlier, I talked about using GitHub and TravicCI and this time around I show how I use GitHub classroom to set up, disseminate, and collect assignments.

Earlier today I was reminded why I love GitHub in support of my classes. One of my students posted a question about our current lab. They posted a synopsis of the problem along with the error message. Since we're all working on GitHub the student's work was already up online Since I started using GitHub Classroom I was able to quickly navigate to the repo. This might have been enough but to really in to the students work I cloned the repo and went into Emacs.

I've been using GitHub with my classes since GitHub's early days. Over time I've gotten my workflows down. I use a combination of shell scripts - many just written on the fly, GitHub organizations, and some naming conventions and protocols that have served me well. A few years ago, the GitHub Education team started GitHub Classroom. I looked at it at the time. It was pretty cool but I had my workflow so I didn't adopt it.

One of the great things about Emacs is that it's not just for writing programs. Sure, you can set it up as an IDE for just about every programming language under the sun but that's just the tip of the iceberg. I use Emacs for just about all my text processing. This includes writing blog posts, reading and writing emails, creating lesson plans and pretty much anything and everything having to do with text.