[p2pu-dev] Tech call notes: 2013-01-17

Jos Flores josmasflores at gmail.com
Sun Jan 20 23:56:36 UTC 2013


Hi Chris,

This is a personal opinion, but I wouldn't measure the size of the app
by the size of the DB, but by the amount of routing you want to do.
I have no experience with flask, but have worked with expressjs in
node (same idea of easy, out of the box restful routing), and it can
get a bit out of hand if your app starts to get bigger. The whole
philosophy in node is to have a number of very small services instead
of a monolithic system, which is why I'm a bit concerned about using
Django for an app that shouldn't be too big in terms of routes and
views. It's like driving a bus to work everyday. Especially if you are
going to use Backbone; you end up with an MVC on the server and an MV*
on the client, when you only really want backbone to load from your
API and forget about server generated html.
I never got a chance to go deep into backbone; been playing with
AngularJS for a couple of weeks, and it feels quite nice, but any of
the two (or other options) feels better than using a big monolithic
framework like RoR or Django for rendering user views.

With regards to ORM for flask, SQL Alchemy seems to be thing I hear
most about: http://www.sqlalchemy.org/
but I haven't used it myself.

Another jump here, if the app is going to store a high number of
emails, a nosql solution could work better than a relational db. If
there is a bunch of unstructured data, that is. Just a thought! :)

cheers,
José


On 20 January 2013 22:14, Chris Ewald <chris at p2pu.org> wrote:
> @José - There are other plans for it. Right now we're calling our current
> tech the Mechanical MOOC and we are going to make, what we're tentatively
> calling the MOOC Maker. The MOOC Maker is the long term goal, which is going
> to have a email scheduler, sign up question configuration, etc. In theory so
> that someone could learn about and set up a MOOC without touching the code.
> Eventually, our current set of scripts will be phased out in favor of this.
>
> Flask looks really nice. The new app is going to have a medium sized db. (
> storing emails which have_many scheduled_sends ). With this in mind, would
> you still recommend it, or does it approach the size where django should be
> used? Is there a good ORM that works nicely with Flask?
>
> I would really like to make the frontend of this using backbone.js -
> especially the email scheduler portion. Think a palette of emails that you
> can drag onto a calendar. Page refreshes would be nasty for something like
> this IMHO. So with that, having a restful backend definitely makes sense.
>
> @Nadeem - I think it does make sense write this in a restful way. Although
> the idea is to eventually make it self sufficient - where all configuration
> is done through the MOOC Maker - we could still design it restfully. It's
> going to be a while before the whole thing is done. And using a JS frontend
> is at least one immediate example of where rest would be useful.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 12:48 PM, Nadeem Shabir <nadeem at p2pu.org> wrote:
>>
>> Hey guys
>>
>> Just chiming in. My understanding is that the MOOC Maker would provide an
>> interface that allowed someone to enter the sort of configuration details
>> the current MOOC scripts we have require; in so far as someone (a user)
>> wanting to set up a mechanical mooc would not need to look at code to be
>> able to do that?
>>
>> From that pov it certainly makes sense for the MOOC Maker to at least have
>> a consistent rest based back end/api which could be implemented in anything;
>> the rest based interface makes it easier for others to integrate the MOOC
>> Maker processes into their own apps ( assuming we are hosting it ) should
>> they wish to. I think the key here ( given that it doesn't seem to be
>> particularly complex ) might be to get something up and running quickly?
>> perhaps sticking to python/django might be pragmatic for now? If we stick to
>> a rest based interface we can always change the underlying implementation
>> later if we think we would benefit from something different?
>>
>> cheers
>> N
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 4:46 PM, Jos Flores <josmasflores at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hey guys,
>>>
>>> loads of goodies in the list, as usual. One question: moving the MOOC
>>> maker to Django?
>>> I understand that python/django is the main tech, and I understand why
>>> you'd want to stay away from RoR, but I probably got this wrong, but I
>>> thought that the mech mooc was more like a set of scripts than a full
>>> blown site... is that correct? or are there other plans for it?
>>>
>>> Would it make sense to have a separate, restful back end, and a front
>>> end written on top of that? Flask maybe on the back end and a
>>> JavaScript MV* library in front?
>>>
>>> cheers,
>>> José
>>>
>>>
>>> On 18 January 2013 15:34, Dirk Uys <dirk at p2pu.org> wrote:
>>> > Progress
>>> >
>>> > Check out http://learn.media.mit.edu - look familiar?
>>> >
>>> > Sysadmin
>>> >
>>> > removed spam from badges.p2pu.org!
>>> >
>>> > backed up etherpad lite database
>>> >
>>> > figured out where the code is for etherpad...
>>> >
>>> > Course UX
>>> >
>>> > show "fresh additions" on course listing page
>>> >
>>> > notifications for new users in courses
>>> >
>>> > MOOC
>>> >
>>> > MOOC blog and documentation
>>> >
>>> > MOOC Trello - https://trello.com/board/mooc/50f414bc44cd6ea45b006dd9
>>> >
>>> > CSS
>>> >
>>> > Setup seperate project scaffolding and variables
>>> >
>>> > Make the documentation page look p2pu nice
>>> >
>>> > lernanta CSS to be finished fo end of month
>>> >
>>> > Blog posts
>>> >
>>> > Good blog Chris
>>> >
>>> > Priorities
>>> >
>>> > Small tweaks to Mech MOOC software for Media Lab course
>>> >
>>> > Sysadmin
>>> >
>>> > moving pad.p2pu.org to same server running stats
>>> >
>>> > updating p2pu.org OS
>>> >
>>> > moving badges.p2pu.org to different server from production
>>> >
>>> > maybe doing it all using Chef
>>> >
>>> > Course UX
>>> >
>>> > feedback from community
>>> >
>>> > support for old courses to list and update on learn page (currently a 1
>>> > time
>>> > export)
>>> >
>>> > CSS
>>> >
>>> > Course UX fixes
>>> >
>>> > Proposals:
>>> >
>>> > MOOC Maker RoR -> Django
>>> >
>>> > Mismatch between org tech stack and MOOC
>>> >
>>> > MOOC Maker will be implemeted in Django
>>> >
>>> > DU, CE to plan
>>> >
>>> > Problems
>>> >
>>> > DONE (removed) -- Still have this in our google groups footer:
>>> >
>>> > "Specific topics such as research, web development and course design
>>> > are
>>> > discussed in separate working groups:
>>> >
>>> > http://wiki.p2pu.org/mailing-lists"
>>> >
>>> > Process
>>> >
>>> > Trello still underused (is there a MOOC Maker board now?)
>>> >
>>> > https://trello.com/board/mooc/50f414bc44cd6ea45b006dd9 - sweet!
>>> >
>>> > Add a person (who takes the lead) to each Trello card
>>> >
>>> > this shouldn't substitute communication! (agree!)
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > _______________________________________________
>>> > p2pu-dev mailing list
>>> > p2pu-dev at lists.p2pu.org
>>> > http://lists.p2pu.org/mailman/listinfo/p2pu-dev
>>> >
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
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