First up "Strype: Frame-Based Editing for Python." A session run by Neil Brown, creator of Strype with Miles Berry and Colleen Lewis acting basically as TAs during the hands on session.

Truth be told, I wasn't going to go to this session, I was going to use the time to visit the exhibit hall. Since there's no way I'll be teaching using Strype any time in the near future, the session wasn't really on my radar. I noticed Miles was listed as a speaker and I've known him online so I figured I'd try to introduce myself in person before the session then I'd hop.

I did end up chatting with Miles which was great but then I decided to stay for the session anyway. Glad I did. As a retired teacher I'm not going to use Strype but the it was a well run and enjoyable session. Neil Brown spent the session walking us through a small hands on project using Strype.

For those of you do don't know, I didn't, Stype is a "frame-based approach to Python." You can check it out here.

I'd describe it as a tool halfway between drag and drop and a text based Python site. It reminded me of a site I used a number of years ago - codesters.com. I also took a few minutes during the session to check to see if codesters was still live and if it had changed.

Strype provides a clean, simplified interface. A section for imports, one for function definitions and one for the rest of the code. It's also fairly constrained. You can't just click on an area and start typing. You have to make sure you're input marker is at the correct location, hit the "hot key" for the thing you want to create (assignment, loop, function call etc.) and then you type the details.

This might sound restrictive and it is, but I think in a good way. My description isn't doing it justice so you should check the Strype site. The environment is constrained enough to help keep beginners on track. Keep them from being overwhelmed and lost but free enough so that I think they'll feel like they're doing traditional coding (which they really are).

Strype also has access to graphics and I'm not sure what else.

One issue that came up was that I was using an Android tablet with keyboard and there were some weird interface issues. Apparently the development effort right now are for the mainstream browsers. I hope though that they can lend some attention to Android since that's what chromebooks run and lots of schools and students use chromebooks.

Fun, well run session and a nice coding platform. If you're looking for a beginner Python platform with some structure, I recommend checking it out.

Second was "Insights from Industry: Projects to Bridge the Gap" run by Joseph Maxwell.

Another good session.

Joseph works at Hyland - a tech company and there, he runs a tech outreach program. Joseph specifically focused on a summer program where High School students "interned" at Hyland - building a tech product while learning industry standard software engineering techniques. I put interned in quotes because the students aren't working on Hyland's codebase. Rather they're building their own projects - something that hopefully will be both useful and complete-able by the end of the program.

After going through the programs five-ish year history, Joseph shared lessons learned.

Teams of 4 or 5 worked best. This is something I learned long ago at Stuy. More than 5, or even 5 and the group is too unwieldy. Three or fewer, not enough to really develop good SWE skills.

For the program, kids had to come in with some experience. Joseph described it as "intermediate experience." I'd say that probably means at least a year of programming but not necessarily things like data structures. In some of the early renditions of the program, they accepted kids with zero experience and the program was more like an intro programming boot camp or class.

They also learned that in person was important for a variety of reasons - team building, having mentors available, and being able to insert group diversions were among those reasons. Being in person though would make setting up a similar program in a rural location or a in fact any location without many tech companies.

It was also important for the students and company to have shared ownership of the project.

The program covered full stack development and Joseph shared a number of resources. Here's a link to his presentation page which includes links to slides, resources, and some of the student projects.

The whole gist of the talk was about giving students a real world experience and introduce them to professional sensibilities but in a safe, relatively low stakes, fun environment.

I love the program but unfortunately there were some severe limitations. Joseph and Hyland are doing this, I'm guessing, to give back since I don't recall Joseph mention any external funding. They are also only working with a small handful of students. That's great for those students but really limits the scope.

It's really a challenge to have a company dedicate the resources needed to support student programs. I ran a program for Google back in 2010. Basically had to take a conference room offline for a month to host the kids. When I was told how much it was "costing" them, I was shocked. You can also think about how hard it is for small companies to run effective college intern programs and those are for kids with much more experience. Having companies dedicate the amount of time and resources needed to support high school students on a summer or even after school project is a big ask.

So, it's a great program but unfortunately can only affect a few kids at a time.

On the flip side, a number of schools do run courses where students do make full stack web apps. Some are more effective than others.

I think my SoftDev class at Stuyvesant worked particularly well but there were a lot of factors that went into that.

1. The kids all had 2 solid years under their belts. An intro class plus a college CS1 (programming) and CS2 (data structures) so they've written a lot of code in multiple languages.
2. They knew each other from the prior courses so community was already built.
3. From those courses they were already comfortable with some of the industry practices and tools.
4. From all my graduates I had a lot of industry connections that I could tap into and since we were an in school class, they didn't have to act as project mentors. My asks were much more manageable.
5. As a year long course we have lots of time and can even do things like have groups work in each other's code bases.
6. I'm a teacher with a strong CS background and professional experience (albeit from the stone age) so I could handle teaching all the technologies and techniques and could directly support the students.

I know other schools and teachers who've done web app courses and many are good or great courses but very few can effectively cover all of the SWE techniques they might want to. The kids by and large just don't have the keyboard time and experience under their belts before starting the course. While at Stuy they have an intro course more rigorous with much more programming than APCS-P and the a superset of the old APCS-AB, also with lots of programming. In many cases, the kids at some of the other schools I know with webdev courses, the kids might only have APCSP or not even. Still often great courses but some things just take time and require experience.

So, what can a teacher do? One thought would be to create something in partnership with a college. College students as mentors would cost less, or maybe even something could be set up as a dual credit course and those college students could be employed by the college as TAs and then act as mentors. True, college students won't have the same SWE experienced as a pro but a third year could certainly have enough experience to be a valuable mentor.

Tech employees could still help support high school students but it would be easier to make a more limited ask - not directly mentoring a full project like a PM but maybe less intense general mentoring.

Another strong session and a great program.

Next up, the rest of the sessions I attended.