RSSRunning codeskulptor locally in Ubuntu
Sep 19
FLOSS, Technology codeskulptor, coursera, floss, python, Tech, ubuntu 1 Comment
For the impatient, jump to the end of this post for the summary of the commands to be invoked. 😉
I have signed up again for a Coursera course for Interactive Python programming to improve my Python programming skills. I am going to sidestep the question if I am going to finish this course for the moment. 😉
The course professors have developed and are using CodeSkulptor to make it easier to create, submit, and grade the course. CodeSkulptor is basically a browser-based Python interpreter that implements a subset of Python 2.x. It absolves the students enrolled in the course from the requirement to install Python in their local machines plus it also allows them to continue working on their code while on different machines (provided they know their work’s randomly generated URL).
The abstraction provided by CodeSkulptor however renders some incompatibilities in running the code locally. This could be a disadvantage for people who wants to work offline, either by choice or by location. Coursera member Jimmy Delgado has provided good quick tutorial on how to run CodeSkulptor code locally. The post is in the Coursera forums but I am replicating it here and then augment it with the steps I have added to make it run on my Ubuntu 14.04 installation.