Introduction to Global Code
The point of this material is to introduce the programme: practically and idealogically.
Practically speaking, the Global Code programme runs for three weeks, with time split between Python, some discrete electronics, Internet of Things, and a fairly major group project.
Tuition is quite heavy at first (about 1/3 of the day) then much less towards the end. The rest of the time is taken with guided lab work in the form of worksheets for pair-work, experimentation and discovery in pairs or groups, and ad-hoc teaching sessions when something comes up. It's structured but becomes less formal as the programme progresses.
Idealogically, we're trying to instill in our students a sense of what it means to be a professional software engineer. We use git from the start, by bootstrapping with a little cargo-culting then introducing concepts over time. We introduce diversity and the Contributor Covenant. We'll talk about testing, design decisions, architecture, code quality, code review, licensing, and teamwork.
No work is done alone, we at least pair 100%. We encourage our students to fail fast, and to use failure as a tool for learning. We ask students to tell the class what went wrong and how it got fixed.
Slide material is purposefully lightweight. There's a bunch of reasons for this:
- It draws the eye to the instructor and away from the slide
- It forces the instructor to... instruct
- It encourages the use of other media in the room
- It makes the slide a bootstrap for discussion.