[WIP] Laying out new material.

[gvwilson]

This PR creates top-level directories for novice and intermediate lessons on the Unix shell, Git, Python, R, and SQL in preparation for reorganizing material in Fall 2013.

Please read the blog post about reorganizing before commenting on this issue.

[ahmadia]

Here's the most relevant section from the blog post:

The repo will have a directory for each topic (shell, Git, etc.). Each will contain sub-directories called novice (for absolute beginners) and intermediate (for people with some previous experience). The lessons for each topic will be independent because running intermediates through novice material at triple speed doesn't work well.

[wking]

On Sat, Nov 02, 2013 at 11:21:44AM -0700, Aron Ahmadia wrote:

Here's the most relevant section from the blog post:

… The lessons for each topic will be independent…

Although this says “topic”, I think @gvwilson meant “level”
(novice/intermediate, as in his #118). It makes sense to me to have
independent novice and intermediate content, but I don't see the point
in developing independent content in a single repository. I expect
that most bootcamps won't be as big as WISE; they'll just have one
section, and the instructors can pick the most appropriately paced
lessons for their students. For these cases, the batch of lessons
with the other pacing are just going to be clutter that you have to
tear out. If instead the lessons are in novice/intermediate
repositories, the instructor can just clone and personalize the
appropriately-leveled central repository. No major surgery required.

On the other hand, perhaps the goal here is to produce a central
web-hosted guide that is not cloned on a per-boot-camp basis for
distribution to students? In that case, having novice and instructor
content in the same repository makes sense to me (although maybe
swcarpentry/site would be a better choice?).

[ahmadia]

@wking - I think the discussion about how we're going to lay out the repository has been tabled until 2014. @gvwilson is moving forward on this reorganization. There are pros and cons to each of the options we could have chosen, but we're going with this one. With regards to how this repository is intended to be used, it is the intention that after the reorganization, instructors will still clone the repository to make changes to it.

[gvwilson]

I now see why @ahmadia wanted this work done on a branch...

That said, I've seeded the python/beginner directory with four notebooks introducing Python as a way to wrangle data. This is not meant to pre-empt discussion about format or tooling, but to give people a straw man to argue around:

• Is this the right size for lessons?
• Are the challenge questions appropriate?
• Would you give learners these notebooks as they are, or cut-down versions, or point-form summaries, or nothing at all (i.e., have them start with a blank screen)?
• Should these notebooks have explicit learning objectives (as in some of the swc-* material currently under lessons)?
• Should authors generate and check in HTML, should that be created automatically after each commit, or should we not bother?

Please answer these questions (and others I haven't thought of) in the discussion of #119 and #120.

[gvwilson]

Canceling because work is being done on a new branch.