I've been meaning to get back to making Emacs videos but I've been having trouble figuring out what to record. People have asked for Magit but I only use the basics and I think there are already some great videos on it out there. I'd also like to get more comfortable with DIRED mode and then do a video on it but I'm not there yet. I've also been looking into packages that manage workspaces like Eyebrowse and Persp-mode but neither are really doing it for my workflow.

Last year I wrote about repl.it, an online IDE that supports multiple languages. At the time it had some rudimentary classroom support and since I started using it, repl.it has become better and better. I used it last year with my class because I had to start the year in a lab where I couldn't easily install my own software. I'll continue to use repl.it - mostly for it's ability to schedule publish and manage assignments but when possible, I like having my students work locally.

I've been working on a vue.js project this summer. During the school year I really can't dive into code so it's been fun. I've already showed you most of the Emacs tools I use for development. Projectile, Ace-Window, IBuffer, Swiper / Ivy and all. One thing I couldn't easily do was arrange windows the way I wanted. I've been setting up Emacs with one large window and a couple of smaller ones:

Very little new Emacs in today's episode of Using Emacs. The video shows my old blogging workflow and what I'm playing with now. The only new Emacs covered is the prodigy package which lets you run services under Emacs. I use it to run Nikola's development server but I think prodigy will also be useful when I start writing that knitting application I promised my wife. When I started this blog, I used Jekyll.

A couple of quick, unrelated packages today. first up, ibuffer. If you keep Emacs open all the time, you'll start to accumulate buffers. Last time, I talked about using projectile and how that can help when navigating between buffers. IBuffer is another one. Out of the box, C-x C-b is bound to the Emacs list-buffers command. It brings up a buffer with all the buffers listed inside it. You can navigate that buffer and hit enter on a particular buffer to go to it.

Earlier today I read Garth Flint's latest post on choosing a Python environment for his classes. While our classes and populations are different it looks like Garth and I share a lot of thoughts on the subject. I started to write a comment to leave on Garth's blog but since it was getting a little long I thought I'd write it up as a post. The question of development environment can be an important one and can make a big difference.

If you keep Emacs open all the time you end up accumulating lots of buffers. That can make navigating a little bit awkward. Projectile is a really nice package that makes navigating in and between projects much easier. I also have counsel-projectile installed. Here's my configuration: ;; projectile (use-package projectile :ensure t :config (projectile-global-mode) (setq projectile-completion-system 'ivy)) (use-package counsel-projectile :ensure t :config (counsel-projectile-on)) Projectile considers a sub-directory tree to be a project if it's a git or other source control repo, if it's created by tool like lein, maven, or sbt, or if you put an empty file named .

When I started using git and GitHub with my students it was a natural progression having started with started with CVS and then, as technology changed moving through Subversion and then Mercurial. It was all about using sensible professional software development techniques while making it easier for students to submit work and for me to evaluate their submissions. Over time, I found that git and GitHub in fact provided some extra support for educators right out of the box.

I wanted to write this up earlier but, as so frequently happens all my dormant work projects decided it was time to rise up and demand instant attention. When we left off, we had students pulling code and submitting homework via github. Form here, it's an easy step to have them working on a small project in their own repo. In fact, sometimes, I'll jump right to a two person project where one person creates the repo and invites the other (and me) as a collaborator.

Note: Just for some quick context. The process I started to describe in the last post and continue here chronicles what I did at Stuy with high schoolers. Now that I'm at Hunter college, I'm adapting the process but the overarching themes remain the same. Post starts here: Now that your students have been pulling the classcode repo regularly it's time to move to the next step - adding and pushing files to a repo.