Hi I have taught with OF before and often had difficulties. I would like to implement it in an intermediate level class. It won’t be a long unit so it won’t run deep and it won’t cover the intricacies of c++. My first question is, is anyone doing this? And if so what issues have you had?
My main worries are: AFAIK OF cannot be used with spaces in folder names or paths. Due to the lack of control of some of this (sometimes from institutions) this is kind of a deal breaker. I saw something on the GitHub regarding this but the current master still has issues even with the download libs when I check.
The next thing that is important is a cross platform IDE. The students are already running VScode for other subjects and I would want to try having the same ide for both windows and OS X. Xcode itself is 12 gig + and many students just won’t have that space (the full visual studio is also pretty big). Is it possible to run OF in OSX and Windows on VSCode?
I know I’d love to teach with OF but I’ve been burnt before a little.
I’d really like to hear your worst of stories if you have recent teaching experience with OF- anything that went wrong that you were not ready for.
Hey @fresla
The spaces issue is definitely still present on macOS for Xcode and Make/VS Code. I think it could be fixed ( and it would be great to ).
Currently VSCode can be used for both, though honestly the setup time in Windows for VSCode is way more than just using the Visual Studio Release. If you are curious though on using VSCode in Windows I put together a forum post which I hope to turn into a guide.
For Mac it just works as far as I can tell ( with the nightly builds ) as it uses Make. The main thing is you will need to install the command line tools but I think you can do that without XCode.
Thanks @theo. I will have a further look, but you are right it sounds like VSCode on windows is more trouble than its worth. I will rethink using xcode and visual studio and warning students they will need a massive amount of space free At least then there will be no isses with spaces in the file paths.
I’ve only seen issues with spaces. Quite often that is students folder organisation and the folder they want to work in is 10 layers deep. I always ask for a different location but I do understand the desire to put files where they want.
I considering the large number of languages some students have their computers in support for paths with non English characters would be important but I have no idea if that exists already. As for special characters (&@ etc). I haven’t seen this in the wild.
I’ve used oF in teaching (mostly with master students) and the IDE setup overhead is always a challenge - if students are BYOD (own devices) it’s easier - when using institution supplied machines often any shared space has directory name or admin permission challenges - usually I do a short video walking thru oF download and setup of IDE for mac/windows and ask all students to follow it and get set up before the first session ensuring they can compile the empty example - then I can triage any problems before hand via email or in the first session - once they can compile the first example it goes much more smoothly…
this is actually what got me into making youTube videos in the first place…
At least then there will be no isses with spaces in the file paths.