WEBVTT captioned by edrx
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Language: en-GB
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Hi! My name is Eduardo Ochs. I'm the author of
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an obscure package called eev and I
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think that it's better to start this
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presentation by the middle of the story -
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by this word here: Maxima.
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Maxima is a computer algebra system
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that has several interfaces. One
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of them is WxMaxima, that looks very
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modern and is very pretty, and it
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looks like this...
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it's a cell based interface. We can type
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an expression here and execute it...
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here's the result.
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But I don't like that interface
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because my memory is very bad, and I type
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very slowly and with lots of mistakes...
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so for me this ugly interface that
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I'm going to show now is much better -
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and here I'm going to show how I am teaching
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that ugly interface to beginners.
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If I type f8 on these three lines here
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it creates a Maxima running inside Emacs -
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I mean, using a terminal and running inside
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a shell buffer in Emacs...
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and if I type f8 on this other the lines here
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the 'f8's send lines to Maxima, and, ta-daaa,
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this small program drew this.
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I live in Brazil and people in
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developed countries cannot imagine
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how are the beginners that we have here...
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in a sense Brazil is another planet.
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Let me explain why, and also let me
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explain why Maxima, why Emacs... because
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people always say "you should use
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programs that everyone finds intuitive,
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like VSCode"...
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well, I teach Calculus in a bad Campus
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of a good Federal University in Brazil.
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My university is called UFF, for
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Universidade Federal Fluminense.
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The main campus of UFF is in Niterói,
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that is a big city near Rio de Janeiro,
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and I work in a city called Rio das Ostras,
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that is is a small city 200 Kms away
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from Rio de Janeiro.
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I started working there in 2009.
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My campus gets very little funding -
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that's a long story that I don't have time
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to tell now - and we get the
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students that don't get enough marks in
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the admission process to go to better places.
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Also, my campus has two institutes -
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I call them The Institute of Humanities
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and The Institute of Inhumanities.
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Each of our institutes has a small building...
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the Humanities building has lots of plants and
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lots of graffittis - I call it the Good Building -
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and the Inhumanities building has lots
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of rules and prohibitions, and I call it the
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Evil Building.
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I heard that the Inhumanities building
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has a laboratory with computers, and that
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it doesn't have any machine that runs Linux...
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but the Inhumanities building is
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shrouded in mystery, and basically
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humans avoid it - only inhumans go there.
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I only discovered how much "another planet"
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Brazil is a few months ago. In May and June
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of this year the federal universities in Brazil
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paralyzed their activities in a nationwide
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strike for two months, and during the strike
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the humanity students occupied the
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Humanities Building and organized lots
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of activities there.
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They asked me if I could give some workshops
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and I offered two hands-on workshops
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on Free Software for beginners -
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basically on Emacs and eev, with
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tutorials with lots of "try this"s...
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and, as usual, the students of
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Computer Science and Engineering ignored
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the workshop completely, and didn't come...
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but some students of psychology and of
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Producão Cultural, which is basically
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techniques for producing cultural
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activities, came to workshop... and they LOVED
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the workshop - they found it FUN.
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And after the workshop I told the
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students that there are lots of things
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that, uh, "everyone knows and I don't",
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and I would like to learn them,
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but I find them too hard to learn by myself
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because I'm a dinosaur - I'm only used to
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interfaces that are very old,
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and that are not graphical... and one
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of the examples of the things that I
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would like to learn was Canva.
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And then the student of Produção Cultural
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taught me Canva in 10 minutes,
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AND THAT CHANGED MY LIFE.
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Anyway, again, I'm working in that place,
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Rio das Ostras, since 2009,
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and the Computer Science students
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here know lots of programs and languages
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that I would like to learn, but in all
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these 15 years the Computer Science
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students only helped me twice.
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It turns out that our Inhumanities
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students don't have a culture of sharing
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and helping - but our Humanities students do.
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Another detail about how much Brazil
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is another planet...
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well, I only discovered this very
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recently, too... my research is in Logic,
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I sometimes go to conferences, usually in
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Brazil, very rarely outside, and people
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here don't bring their laptops to the
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conferences - we don't have a culture
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of sitting together with friends
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or colleagues to learn with them how to
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use the programs that they use...
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for example, many of my friends
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are logicians, so they have to draw
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lots of diagrams, and I don't know how
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they use their programs to draw diagrams...
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I don't know how things are in
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universities with good computer labs but,
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anyway, consider these sentences
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sentences that sort of everybody says...
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"Everyone knows VSCode",
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"Everyone knows Jupiter Notebooks",
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"Everyone draws diagrams with Quiver"...
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Here these things are not true -
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and they are not relevant -
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here knowledge about programs does not
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propagate... and
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one of my goals in life is
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to become friends with some people who
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know how to use for example, code blocks
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in Org, and JavaScript, and learn some of
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their workflows... or, rather one of my
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goals is to become someone who deserves
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help.
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More on Maxima for students...
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remember: our inhumanities students
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don't have a culture of sharing and helping
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but our humanity students do...
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I've been telling my students - I teach
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Calculus 2 and 3 here -that they will learn
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much faster if they learn Maxima,
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and that people who learn Maxima can take
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an optional test and earn extra marks
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in the course, but if they behave
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as typical inhumanities students -
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I mean, not asking questions and
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not helping their colleagues -
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then I won't help help...
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Actually it's even worse. I've
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told my students that my documentation
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is not good enough yet and every
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question helps me a lot, so PLEASE ask
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questions, and I've bagged on my knees...
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and now I can treat students
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who don't ask questions as people who
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won't help someone that they know
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who is begging on his knees!
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Now let me explain another word of
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the title of this presentation.
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The title of this presentation is
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"Emacs, eev, and Maxima - Now!"
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The "Now!" in the title means:
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in less than one hour and even for people
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who have never seen a terminal in their lives.
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Well, my title is a slight exaggeration...
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it only took less than one hour
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for one person, who is a school kid
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from a small City in the North of Brazil,
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who didn't know anything about programming,
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but who was competing in the local
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Math Olympiads, so not a typical person...
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Now let me tell a story based on
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real events and based on a real student.
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The student said: "I have Linux on my
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laptop, can you help me to do blah1?"
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I answered: "Sure, do blah2 and blah3..."
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this was all by chat, I don't remember if
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by WhatsApp or by Telegram...
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then one week passes, and the student
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talks to me again, and the student says:
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"It doesn't work!", and I answer:
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"What happens when you do blah4 and blah5?"
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another week passes, then the student reappears,
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and he says: "It doesn't work!"
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and I answer: "Type blah6 and blah7 in
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the terminal, press ENTER, take a
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photo of your screen... remember, not a
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screenshot, it's a photo of your screen...
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and send it to me." Then the student
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disappears again, another week passes and
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the student reappears and says:
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"How do I open a terminal?"
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Well, then...
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PLONK.
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According to the Jargon file "plonk" is
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the sound of that a newbie makes as he
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falls to the bottom of a kill file.
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I prefer this simpler definition here...
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for me "plonk" is the sound
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that a person makes when he, or she, or they
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hits the bottom of my list of priorities.
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I've been using this slogan with my
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students - it sounds much better in
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Portuguese, sorry... "I am not a telepath,
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and for me it is 100 times harder to
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discover the doubts of people who don't
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talk to me than to discover the doubts of
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people who do talk to me.
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There's an interesting thing here in
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this presentation by Abelson and Sussman.
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Let me explain now this word of
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my title, "Emacs"...
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and the idea is that learning Emacs can
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mean many things, learning Lisp can mean
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many things, and in this presentation...
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oh no, one second...
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sorry, back.
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In this presentation they say...
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"anyone can learn Lisp in one day,
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except that if they already know Fortran,
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then it will take three days".
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And I would add: and if the person
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is starting with Doom Emacs then it would
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take take five years.
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Why? Because the person is using
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a different notion of Emacs,
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and a different notion of Lisp.
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The person is starting by spending five
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years learning how to configure Emacs, and
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the person is using Lisp as a very weird
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configuration language.
00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:48.000
Usually the people who start by Doom Emacs
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they start by configuring Emacs,
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and only then they learn things like
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defun, etc...
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and another slogan that I use a lot
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with my students is that there are
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many cases in which learning just the
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thing B takes 200 hours but learning
00:12:07.000 --> 00:12:13.000
A and then B takes just 20 hours.
00:12:13.000 --> 00:12:16.000
Here are some kinds of beginners
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that I do not want to help.
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First example: a person who says "I can't
00:12:21.000 --> 00:12:24.000
read that page - it has too many links".
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Second example: a person who says
00:12:27.000 --> 00:12:29.000
"I don't want to read anything and
00:12:29.000 --> 00:12:31.000
I don't want to learn anything,
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I want something that just works".
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And third example: "I don't want to
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look at examples, you need to summarize
00:12:38.000 --> 00:12:40.000
everything to me in one paragraph".
00:12:40.000 --> 00:12:43.000
There are more explanations on
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these kinds of beginners at my page
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about this presentation - here.
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And here is one kind of beginner
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that I really want to help.
00:12:54.000 --> 00:12:57.000
Beginners that are nerdy kids
00:12:57.000 --> 00:13:00.000
who are used to:
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reading materials that are too advanced for them,
00:13:03.000 --> 00:13:05.000
understanding only a few percent of what they read,
00:13:05.000 --> 00:13:10.000
remembering just a tiny fraction of what they read,
00:13:10.000 --> 00:13:14.000
going to back to these materials later,
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and taking notes about what they read...
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and who are also always interested in
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experimenting with new ways of taking notes,
00:13:25.000 --> 00:13:28.000
transcribing, summarizing and saving links
00:13:28.000 --> 00:13:32.000
to primary sources.
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I'd like to say something about how
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I've been plonking the paragraph people...
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who are the people who say:
00:13:40.000 --> 00:13:43.000
"I don't want to look at examples,
00:13:43.000 --> 00:13:45.000
you need to summarize everything to me
00:13:45.000 --> 00:13:45.000
in one paragraph".
00:13:45.000 --> 00:13:48.000
Well, I'm a mathematician...
00:13:48.000 --> 00:13:50.000
I work with lots of things
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that can only be summarized in a paragraph
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if we choose the level of who
00:13:55.000 --> 00:13:57.000
we are talking to...
00:13:57.000 --> 00:13:59.000
so we have many different
00:13:59.000 --> 00:14:02.000
one-paragraph summaries,
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one for each level...
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and in many cases this sentence,
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"you need to summarize it
00:14:08.000 --> 00:14:10.000
in one paragraph", is WRONG -
00:14:10.000 --> 00:14:13.000
the person means I want to learn a lot
00:14:13.000 --> 00:14:15.000
in 10 minutes - and this needs diagrams
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animations, AND EXAMPLES.
00:14:18.000 --> 00:14:21.000
This is an example of something
00:14:21.000 --> 00:14:24.000
in mathematics - in category Theory -
00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:27.000
I only understood after too many time -
00:14:27.000 --> 00:14:29.000
after zillions of years...
00:14:29.000 --> 00:14:30.000
It is called The Yoneda Lemma.
00:14:30.000 --> 00:14:32.000
This is the general case -
00:14:32.000 --> 00:14:35.000
this small thing here...
00:14:35.000 --> 00:14:40.000
but I only understood it after
00:14:40.000 --> 00:14:45.000
understanding many particular cases, and
00:14:45.000 --> 00:14:49.000
then organizing them in a way in which
00:14:49.000 --> 00:14:52.000
different figures had similar shapes...
00:14:52.000 --> 00:14:56.000
and the textual explanations
00:14:56.000 --> 00:14:58.000
for the Yoneda Lemma - the one paragraph
00:14:58.000 --> 00:15:00.000
explanations, or the many paragraph
00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:04.000
explanations - never helped the much...
00:15:04.000 --> 00:15:07.000
they contained formulas...
00:15:07.000 --> 00:15:10.000
in mathematics, but written linearly...
00:15:10.000 --> 00:15:12.000
that had too many symbols...
00:15:12.000 --> 00:15:15.000
and my mental buffer is very small...
00:15:15.000 --> 00:15:18.000
and I had to find several tricks to reduce
00:15:18.000 --> 00:15:21.000
the cognitive overload of all these ideas.
00:15:21.000 --> 00:15:24.000
For example, I had to name the symbols
00:15:24.000 --> 00:15:29.000
consecutively, like A, B, C,
00:15:29.000 --> 00:15:31.000
so there's a kind of a temporal order
00:15:31.000 --> 00:15:34.000
in which the symbols that appear first
00:15:34.000 --> 00:15:37.000
have initial letters...
00:15:37.000 --> 00:15:40.000
I had to find a way to put
00:15:40.000 --> 00:15:42.000
an archetypal case and the general case
00:15:42.000 --> 00:15:43.000
side to side -
00:15:43.000 --> 00:15:45.000
they have the same "shape"...
00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:47.000
I had to find good conventions
00:15:47.000 --> 00:15:49.000
for fonts and types...
00:15:49.000 --> 00:15:51.000
I had to choose good meanings
00:15:51.000 --> 00:15:53.000
for what it means...
00:15:53.000 --> 00:15:57.000
sorry, for what are vertical arrows,
00:15:57.000 --> 00:16:01.000
what are horizontal arrows, and so on...
00:16:01.000 --> 00:16:06.000
and what is "above without an arrow"...
00:16:06.000 --> 00:16:09.000
So, how much detail should we include
00:16:09.000 --> 00:16:12.000
in our technical explanations?
00:16:12.000 --> 00:16:14.000
Well there are many measures
00:16:14.000 --> 00:16:17.000
for cognitive (over)load...
00:16:17.000 --> 00:16:20.000
For example, I asked many technical questions
00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:21.000
on the Maxima mailing list
00:16:21.000 --> 00:16:24.000
that got answers that included
00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:27.000
snippets and names of of Lisp functions...
00:16:27.000 --> 00:16:29.000
in Common Lisp, because Maxima is written
00:16:29.000 --> 00:16:32.000
in Common Lisp... and I liked that...
00:16:32.000 --> 00:16:35.000
and I asked some some technical questions
00:16:35.000 --> 00:16:35.000
on the Org mailing list
00:16:35.000 --> 00:16:37.000
and on the Hyperbole mailing list,
00:16:37.000 --> 00:16:40.000
and usually I got answers
00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:43.000
that avoided the technical details...
00:16:43.000 --> 00:16:45.000
note that I chose the term "avoided"
00:16:45.000 --> 00:16:47.000
to denote frustration...
00:16:47.000 --> 00:16:50.000
by the way, if one of my students panics
00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:54.000
on this part here...
00:16:54.000 --> 00:16:56.000
"After setting the user and password
00:16:56.000 --> 00:16:57.000
you will get a Unix prompt"...
00:16:57.000 --> 00:17:01.000
if the student panics on this
00:17:01.000 --> 00:17:05.000
and does not know what to ask
00:17:05.000 --> 00:17:07.000
and just gives up, then...
00:17:07.000 --> 00:17:09.000
plonk.
00:17:09.000 --> 00:17:13.000
So... I was talking a lot about
00:17:13.000 --> 00:17:15.000
plonking people...
00:17:15.000 --> 00:17:16.000
What's left after plonking many people?
00:17:16.000 --> 00:17:19.000
Well, several kinds of beginners
00:17:19.000 --> 00:17:21.000
that I want to interact with...
00:17:21.000 --> 00:17:26.000
note that "kinds" is plural...
00:17:26.000 --> 00:17:30.000
Also, I get a definition for the term
00:17:30.000 --> 00:17:32.000
"beginners"... think on books...
00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:37.000
technical books, that start with
00:17:37.000 --> 00:17:38.000
"This book is written for the persons
00:17:38.000 --> 00:17:40.000
of the types such and such"...
00:17:40.000 --> 00:17:43.000
Maybe several definitions
00:17:43.000 --> 00:17:47.000
for the term "beginners"...
00:17:47.000 --> 00:17:49.000
also, a metric that lets me choose between
00:17:49.000 --> 00:17:52.000
options A, B and C when I'm trying to
00:17:52.000 --> 00:17:55.000
write material for my beginners...
00:17:55.000 --> 00:18:00.000
for example, here, again...
00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:04.000
should I explain what is a Unix prompt?
00:18:04.000 --> 00:18:07.000
No!!!
00:18:07.000 --> 00:18:09.000
Why "no"?
00:18:09.000 --> 00:18:11.000
Well, let me use another example.
00:18:11.000 --> 00:18:16.000
This one I took from a discussion on IRC...
00:18:16.000 --> 00:18:18.000
we were helping a certain beginner
00:18:18.000 --> 00:18:20.000
that was there...
00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:24.000
and one person suggested to the beginner
00:18:24.000 --> 00:18:27.000
to do this: type M-:, and then this
00:18:27.000 --> 00:18:29.000
thing here, and then ENTER.
00:18:29.000 --> 00:18:33.000
And I suggested this instead.
00:18:33.000 --> 00:18:35.000
Copy this expression to your notes,
00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:38.000
and then type C-e C-x C-e...
00:18:38.000 --> 00:18:42.000
and the mnemonic for C-e C-x C-e is
00:18:42.000 --> 00:18:44.000
C-exe, for "execute".
00:18:44.000 --> 00:18:47.000
And then... for me the option 1,
00:18:47.000 --> 00:18:50.000
this option here, is very costly,
00:18:50.000 --> 00:18:53.000
because the person has to type a lot
00:18:53.000 --> 00:18:55.000
without errors,
00:18:55.000 --> 00:18:59.000
and then after running that
00:18:59.000 --> 00:19:03.000
and reading this page here...
00:19:03.000 --> 00:19:06.000
the way of going back to that page is gone.
00:19:06.000 --> 00:19:08.000
So the person has to commit lots
00:19:08.000 --> 00:19:10.000
of information to memory -
00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:13.000
either the person learns from this page
00:19:13.000 --> 00:19:16.000
everything that she needs or the person
00:19:16.000 --> 00:19:20.000
memorizes how to go there the next time....
00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:24.000
and for me the option 2 - this one:
00:19:24.000 --> 00:19:27.000
put this in your notes and then
00:19:27.000 --> 00:19:29.000
execute it with C-exe -
00:19:29.000 --> 00:19:32.000
is much better, because the person
00:19:32.000 --> 00:19:34.000
commits information to notes,
00:19:34.000 --> 00:19:36.000
and the person learns a way to return
00:19:36.000 --> 00:19:40.000
to this node of the manual later...
00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:45.000
and with this the person learns
00:19:45.000 --> 00:19:47.000
another way to use her notes.
00:19:47.000 --> 00:19:50.000
I have a lot of material about that...
00:19:50.000 --> 00:19:52.000
see for example this page here -
00:19:52.000 --> 00:19:54.000
there's a link to it
00:19:54.000 --> 00:19:56.000
in my page for this talk...
00:19:56.000 --> 00:19:58.000
also, I live in a place in which
00:19:58.000 --> 00:20:00.000
the people who find my instructions
00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:03.000
too complex or too boring
00:20:03.000 --> 00:20:06.000
disappear - either for months or forever...
00:20:06.000 --> 00:20:08.000
So if I give an instruction
00:20:08.000 --> 00:20:10.000
that the person cannot understand
00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:13.000
and the person gives up
00:20:13.000 --> 00:20:15.000
I lose the person...
00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:18.000
Now let me do some things in a weird order.
00:20:18.000 --> 00:20:20.000
In a normal presentation this would be
00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:22.000
the conclusion, and it would be presented
00:20:22.000 --> 00:20:24.000
at the end...
00:20:24.000 --> 00:20:26.000
but I will present it now,
00:20:26.000 --> 00:20:28.000
before the technical details.
00:20:28.000 --> 00:20:31.000
So, I was teaching Emacs, eev and Maxima
00:20:31.000 --> 00:20:34.000
for students... did it work well?
00:20:34.000 --> 00:20:36.000
Well... sort of, but in a weird way.
00:20:36.000 --> 00:20:39.000
Many students decided to take my test
00:20:39.000 --> 00:20:42.000
on Emacs, eev, and Maxima...
00:20:42.000 --> 00:20:45.000
let me consider only the 35 students
00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:48.000
in the two last semesters that were able
00:20:48.000 --> 00:20:51.000
to do what I asked, that was to use a link
00:20:51.000 --> 00:20:56.000
like this one to go to my notes...
00:20:56.000 --> 00:20:59.000
they had to go to a specific small program
00:20:59.000 --> 00:21:02.000
in Maxima, copy that program to their notes,
00:21:02.000 --> 00:21:04.000
modify it a bit to make it solve
00:21:04.000 --> 00:21:06.000
a slightly different problem,
00:21:06.000 --> 00:21:08.000
and then save the new program.
00:21:08.000 --> 00:21:11.000
So it was mostly a test on the interface,
00:21:11.000 --> 00:21:14.000
and to test if they knew some
00:21:14.000 --> 00:21:16.000
very basic things on Maxima...
00:21:16.000 --> 00:21:19.000
but of these 35 students only 10 students
00:21:19.000 --> 00:21:21.000
asked questions on the Telegram group...
00:21:21.000 --> 00:21:24.000
Mostly they discussed
00:21:24.000 --> 00:21:27.000
with other students...
00:21:27.000 --> 00:21:30.000
sometimes live - they would bring
00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:34.000
their laptops to the university to discuss...
00:21:34.000 --> 00:21:37.000
they only do that very rarely,
00:21:37.000 --> 00:21:40.000
but they brought it...
00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:42.000
other times they would discuss
00:21:42.000 --> 00:21:44.000
with their colleagues on Discord...
00:21:44.000 --> 00:21:47.000
but I got very little feedback
00:21:47.000 --> 00:21:50.000
for my usability test.
00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:52.000
So my experiment failed - in the sense
00:21:52.000 --> 00:21:55.000
that I didn't get the feedback
00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:57.000
that I expected - I only got a fraction
00:21:57.000 --> 00:21:59.000
of the feedback that I expected...
00:21:59.000 --> 00:22:03.000
...but I learned lots of things.
00:22:03.000 --> 00:22:06.000
Well, I got very angry, very frustrated,
00:22:06.000 --> 00:22:08.000
but I saw that I can't invest a lot of energy
00:22:08.000 --> 00:22:11.000
on students who... how do I say?
00:22:11.000 --> 00:22:13.000
who "won't talk to me".
00:22:13.000 --> 00:22:16.000
then I decided to make contact
00:22:16.000 --> 00:22:19.000
with some schools - secondary schools -
00:22:19.000 --> 00:22:21.000
and to make a long story short...
00:22:21.000 --> 00:22:25.000
in one of the schools I was
00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:27.000
very well received...
00:22:27.000 --> 00:22:29.000
the students asked lots of questions,
00:22:29.000 --> 00:22:31.000
and in the middle of the discussion
00:22:31.000 --> 00:22:35.000
we were discussing this little program here,
00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:37.000
that splits the the frame in two windows
00:22:37.000 --> 00:22:38.000
and displays the file ~/HELP
00:22:38.000 --> 00:22:41.000
in the window at the right...
00:22:41.000 --> 00:22:46.000
and I showed them Elisp tutorial,
00:22:46.000 --> 00:22:50.000
that starts... here...
00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:55.000
and right in its third section
00:22:55.000 --> 00:22:57.000
it explains 'quote'.
00:22:57.000 --> 00:23:00.000
So, I had to explain to them
00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:03.000
how we can use quote to pass...
00:23:03.000 --> 00:23:07.000
to avoid evaluating a program...
00:23:07.000 --> 00:23:09.000
we can use quote to pass unevaluated
00:23:09.000 --> 00:23:11.000
programs as arguments...
00:23:11.000 --> 00:23:13.000
and quote blew their minds,
00:23:13.000 --> 00:23:16.000
and I was amazed by their questions,
00:23:16.000 --> 00:23:18.000
and I saw more clearly that the campus
00:23:18.000 --> 00:23:20.000
in which I work is a hole,
00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:22.000
and that I need to do more things outside.
00:23:22.000 --> 00:23:25.000
Now let's see some technical details.
00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:28.000
What exactly am I teaching to
00:23:28.000 --> 00:23:20.000
these students?
00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:32.000
Basically, my old tutorial for eev
00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:36.000
was this one... it started with a
00:23:36.000 --> 00:23:39.000
section on installing eev, and then it
00:23:39.000 --> 00:23:42.000
explained Lisp, and how to use
00:23:42.000 --> 00:23:44.000
elisp hyperlinks...
00:23:44.000 --> 00:23:46.000
and then lots of other things...
00:23:46.000 --> 00:23:49.000
but I'm using this new tutorial here,
00:23:49.000 --> 00:23:51.000
that I am not announcing in many places
00:23:51.000 --> 00:23:54.000
because I wanted to test it a lot
00:23:54.000 --> 00:23:59.000
before making it very public...
00:23:59.000 --> 00:24:04.000
and it starts with other installation
00:24:04.000 --> 00:24:06.000
instructions, that start with
00:24:06.000 --> 00:24:11.000
instructions for installing WSL
00:24:11.000 --> 00:24:13.000
on a machine with Windows,
00:24:13.000 --> 00:24:16.000
and then installing Debian there
00:24:16.000 --> 00:24:19.000
and then after that people have to install
00:24:19.000 --> 00:24:26.000
Emacs, and then they have to install eev...
00:24:26.000 --> 00:24:30.000
And I'm also using this map here,
00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:32.000
that I'm reorganizing,
00:24:32.000 --> 00:24:34.000
so it's going to change a lot
00:24:34.000 --> 00:24:36.000
in the next days...
00:24:36.000 --> 00:24:40.000
it has a 2-dimensional map here,
00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:44.000
and it has lots of things that I'm putting
00:24:44.000 --> 00:24:46.000
in a single place to make it easier
00:24:46.000 --> 00:24:49.000
to answer questions, and to show
00:24:49.000 --> 00:24:51.000
to the students that I have answers
00:24:51.000 --> 00:24:56.000
for the most common questions...
00:24:56.000 --> 00:24:59.000
Remember, my target audience
00:24:59.000 --> 00:25:02.000
is mostly composed of beginners who have
00:25:02.000 --> 00:25:04.000
never seen a terminal in their lives,
00:25:04.000 --> 00:25:06.000
and that get bored very quickly...
00:25:06.000 --> 00:25:10.000
and when they get bored they disappear.
00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:15.000
What are my main goals for the first day?
00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:19.000
I want them to "install everything",
00:25:19.000 --> 00:25:22.000
where "everything" means WSL on their
00:25:22.000 --> 00:25:27.000
Windows machines, then Debian, Emacs, eev,
00:25:27.000 --> 00:25:32.000
lots of Debian packages that they install
00:25:32.000 --> 00:25:44.000
with this block here...
00:25:44.000 --> 00:25:47.000
After that they need to run
00:25:47.000 --> 00:25:51.000
some Maxima programs, and some test blocks...
00:25:51.000 --> 00:25:53.000
and configure Emacs, and create a first set
00:25:53.000 --> 00:25:57.000
of executable notes, and I consider
00:25:57.000 --> 00:25:59.000
that after that the person is
00:25:59.000 --> 00:26:01.000
autonomous.
00:26:01.000 --> 00:26:04.000
I said that the students
00:26:04.000 --> 00:26:05.000
learn how to "Run some Maxima programs".
00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:07.000
Let me be more precise about that.
00:26:07.000 --> 00:26:09.000
The first step is something
00:26:09.000 --> 00:26:14.000
that I call "The 5-minute workshop"...
00:26:14.000 --> 00:26:17.000
it happens in the classroom,
00:26:17.000 --> 00:26:20.000
on my laptop, and I make the students
00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:20.000
run this.
00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:24.000
Actually in a first moment I run
00:26:24.000 --> 00:26:27.000
this thing here, and then I ask them
00:26:27.000 --> 00:26:30.000
to run it themselves.
00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:35.000
So: I type f8 on these three things here,
00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:37.000
we get a target buffer running Maxima,
00:26:37.000 --> 00:26:40.000
then I type f8 several other times here...
00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:42.000
when I type f8 here it opens a GNUPlot
00:26:42.000 --> 00:26:46.000
window, that I have to close
00:26:46.000 --> 00:26:49.000
by typing 'q' here...
00:26:49.000 --> 00:26:51.000
and that's it. And then I say:
00:26:51.000 --> 00:26:53.000
now it's your turn. And the students go there,
00:26:53.000 --> 00:26:56.000
they type f8 three times, and then they
00:26:56.000 --> 00:27:03.000
type f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 f8 q f8 q...
00:27:03.000 --> 00:27:07.000
The second step is similar -
00:27:07.000 --> 00:27:09.000
is another individual workshop,
00:27:09.000 --> 00:27:01.000
also just a few minutes long,
00:27:01.000 --> 00:27:15.000
in which they learn how to access my notes.
00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:17.000
My notes on Maxima are here -
00:27:17.000 --> 00:27:21.000
I mean, this is the HTMLized version...
00:27:21.000 --> 00:27:26.000
it starts with a header, then a huge index,
00:27:26.000 --> 00:27:29.000
then many blocks like this...
00:27:29.000 --> 00:27:31.000
and this is a specific block that corresponds
00:27:31.000 --> 00:27:33.000
to the thing that we we ran
00:27:33.000 --> 00:27:37.000
in the first 5-minute workshop.
00:27:37.000 --> 00:27:40.000
And in this second 5-minute workshop
00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:43.000
they run the instructions in this section...
00:27:43.000 --> 00:27:46.000
usually I skip this thing in the first moment,
00:27:46.000 --> 00:27:52.000
then I explain it to them...
00:27:52.000 --> 00:27:56.000
and they run something like this,
00:27:56.000 --> 00:27:58.000
that downloads a copy
00:27:58.000 --> 00:28:02.000
of my notes on Maxima,
00:28:02.000 --> 00:28:04.000
puts that copy in a temporary buffer...
00:28:04.000 --> 00:28:06.000
and they can run the thing here
00:28:06.000 --> 00:28:18.000
exactly in the same way as before...
00:28:18.000 --> 00:28:22.000
And I also ask them to run the small
00:28:22.000 --> 00:28:25.000
Maxim programs in other blocks,
00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:27.000
like this one, for example...
00:28:27.000 --> 00:28:29.000
if we run this it calculates the solution
00:28:29.000 --> 00:28:31.000
of a question that I put in a test
00:28:31.000 --> 00:28:34.000
one or two semesters ago...
00:28:34.000 --> 00:28:38.000
it starts by calculating several integrals
00:28:38.000 --> 00:28:41.000
and then it organizes all the solutions
00:28:41.000 --> 00:28:49.000
in a big Matrix like this...
00:28:49.000 --> 00:28:52.000
I said that at one point the students
00:28:52.000 --> 00:28:55.000
have to install lots of Debian packages.
00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:59.000
This happens after they have installed
00:28:59.000 --> 00:29:05.000
Debian, then Emacs, and eev...
00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:09.000
and they already know a bit about eepitch,
00:29:09.000 --> 00:29:12.000
so they are in this section of the
00:29:12.000 --> 00:29:14.000
instructions, and they just have to type
00:29:14.000 --> 00:29:20.000
f8 here several times and watch what
00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:22.000
happens...
00:29:22.000 --> 00:29:24.000
after that we have many options,
00:29:24.000 --> 00:29:26.000
and I have this map here and I usually
00:29:26.000 --> 00:29:29.000
choose a path according to the interests
00:29:29.000 --> 00:29:32.000
and the questions of the students...
00:29:32.000 --> 00:29:34.000
and there are many things that can go wrong,
00:29:34.000 --> 00:29:37.000
so this page also works as as a place
00:29:37.000 --> 00:29:41.000
in which I put all my troubleshooting
00:29:41.000 --> 00:29:43.000
instructions...
00:29:43.000 --> 00:29:43.000
and if a student has a question...
00:29:43.000 --> 00:29:47.000
I mean, suppose that the student is
00:29:47.000 --> 00:29:50.000
talking to me by WhatsApp or Telegram,
00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:52.000
and the student is saying:
00:29:52.000 --> 00:29:54.000
okay I installed the things such and such,
00:29:54.000 --> 00:29:56.000
and I tried the thing blahblah, and
00:29:56.000 --> 00:29:58.000
something went wrong...
00:29:58.000 --> 00:29:59.000
and I say: ok, can you send me a screenshot
00:29:59.000 --> 00:30:02.000
or a photo of your screen?
00:30:02.000 --> 00:30:04.000
And then we can troubleshoot that
00:30:04.000 --> 00:30:10.000
by using a section of this page here.
00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:11.000
This is a work in progress,
00:30:11.000 --> 00:30:14.000
I'm reorganizing this thing for
00:30:14.000 --> 00:30:15.000
the 10th time...
00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:19.000
and the rest of what can happen
00:30:19.000 --> 00:30:21.000
with these students can't be explained
00:30:21.000 --> 00:30:23.000
clearly in a video... so I'm going
00:30:23.000 --> 00:30:26.000
to put the all the other stuff in the
00:30:26.000 --> 00:30:28.000
page of the video, and I'm going to stop
00:30:28.000 --> 00:30:30.000
the video here.
00:30:30.000 --> 00:07:12.000
So: thanks, and bye!
