Beginner-friendly environment -- help needed

[daslu]

@Markus_Agwin

… Clojure beginner tutorial. It is based on Blockly visual programming, …

Fascinating!

[daslu]

@didibus

In my experience, IntelliJ + Cursive has been the most beginner friendly solution.

The doc for both is great. And they have more of a “just work” feel to them, due to their commercial nature.

For learning, both can be used for free.

Thanks @didibus, this makes sense (and seems to match the experience of people around me). I’ll add that suggestion too.

[marcelocra]

@daslu How did it go? I’m interested in knowing about which setup worked better for beginners .

[daslu]

Hi @marcelocra! Sorry for the late reply.

A few of the student teams used VSCode+Calva (that I recommended following this thread), and a few used IntelliJ+Cursive (since it was already familiar to them).

I think for the few teams who actually got involved and had some progress, the editor experience has been fine. I do not know, however, how much of an obstacle it has been for the teams who haven’t become so active.

We hope to have some broader experience with beginners in the coming months, and then share some lessons.

By the way, the Rails Girls Summer of Code (mentioned in the thread above) has been cancelled, sadly. In the few months preparing to the project with the teams that were interested, I have learned how amazing that project had been. I am so grateful for that experience, and for the efforts and magnificent work the RGSoC team and participants has been doing.