

Show HN: Learning SICP with Understudy - kenferry
http://blog.understudyapp.com/learn-sicp-make-friends/

======
davexunit
To repeat what I said in the SICP thread from a couple of days ago:

Folks, you don't need proprietary software or an iThing to get help with SICP.
Hop on #scheme on freenode and check out
[http://schemers.org/](http://schemers.org/) for resources.

Get yourself a good Scheme implementation like GNU Guile or Racket and get
hacking.

~~~
pohl
HN is refreshingly free of terms like M$. Why do we give iThing a free pass?

~~~
bitwize
It succinctly captures the entire category of "small personal electronic
device from Apple" including all present _and plausible future_ product lines.
Unlike M$, it has both derogatory and non-derogatory intonations and
connotations.

~~~
qq66
iDevice captures the same category without any derogatory intonations.

~~~
davexunit
It's meant to be a pejorative term. Apple is an enemy of our freedom.

~~~
pohl
The intended contempt may have eluded brudgers, bitwize, and peteretep but it
wasn't lost on me - hence my question.

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monkmartinez
The idea is solid, but the technology to get there is crap. People who have
used a wacom or ntrig based tablet can tell you drawing and writing with
anything else is, to put it bluntly, complete shit. Drawing and writing on
capacitive screens is a horrible experience; No palm rejection, no pressure
sensitivity, and accuracy is problematic.

There is a reason why note takers, artists and others are pursuing options for
tablets and PC's that have digitizer technology baked in. Look at Crabfu, Gabe
of penny arcade and the hundreds of iPad vs. Galaxy Note vs Surface Pro
youtube videos. The Surface Pro is a very compelling device if you strip away
the emotional baggage related to MSFT.

~~~
kenferry
This is neither art nor note taking, it's communication. :-) It's visual
anchoring and gesturing - after the call's over you don't end up looking back
at what you did almost at all.

We didn't know if the tech would work, but we have enough beta testers at this
point that I'm pretty sure that it does.

Here's a video of a couple people talking some SICP.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrdjKvka558](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrdjKvka558)

~~~
monkmartinez
The video is great! One, Is it possible for a user to "save" the session?
After all, it may be some time before they get back together. Two, the quality
of written aspect, which is central to the "communication" idea is very poor
in comparison to what I can achieve on my Galaxy Note 3 with wacom digitizer.
I am a lefty with very small handwriting and its still very legible on the
GN3... I can't wait to get a bigger tablet with the digitizer baked in.

I think the idea could be useful for much more than SICP, however the ability
to save and actually read what you have written would be killer features.

~~~
kenferry
> One, Is it possible for a user to "save" the session?

Yup! Old sessions are basically saved as documents.

> Two, the quality of written aspect, which is central to the "communication"
> idea is very poor in comparison to what I can achieve on my Galaxy Note 3
> with wacom digitizer.

You didn't quite state the question there. :-) If things work out, we'll
definitely want to do Android too.

> I think the idea could be useful for much more than SICP, however the
> ability to save and actually read what you have written would be killer
> features.

Hope so! We're starting with SICP and Drawing on the Right Side of the
Brain[1], but it's really easy for us to add other courses. We really have
something like Coursera in mind.

[1] Note: For the drawing book, you're not doing the drawing exercises _in_
the app, you're doing them on paper and then talking them over.
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/bkjrbclpda8fg5y/Drawing%20Final.pn...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/bkjrbclpda8fg5y/Drawing%20Final.png)

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grannyg00se
"We find that Understudy is much more natural than Skype for collaboration (as
opposed to for idle chatting). The whiteboard canvas lets you gesture and make
visual references, and you can attach PDFs or images."

This is a false analogy. Skype isn't limited to idle chatting and you can also
attach PDFs or images into a skype chat. And you can also screen share on
Skype so any paint program would double as a whiteboard.

I suspect the use case for Understudy is much better served with Understudy
than Skype, but the way the comparison is presented on the site doesn't really
help, and may be interpreted as completely disingenuous.

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hardwaresofton
I'm not sure I'm convinced of the payment model...

Charging for human interaction seems like a losing proposition... What's to
stop a competitor from coming along, doing the same thing, but removing the
cost?

And what does the cost represent? Server drain? use of the drawing platform?
there's gotta be a better business model out there... maybe you can integrate
with amazon and make this a more general read-with-friends kind of thing and
sell the reading pattern data (that seems like it would be valuable to
companies like amazon or barnes & noble)...?

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oskarth
This looks great and I would love to use it for both SICP and learning how to
draw. I don't mind paying for online services like these. However, I don't
have an iPad, but I do have an iphone and an MBA. Where does that leave me and
all the other potential customers like me?

~~~
kenferry
Sorry about that! The thing is, a tablet is very well suited to the
whiteboard, and we find that the whiteboard _really_ helps for this kind of
working collaboration.

It makes it very natural to gesture and discuss visually.

Understudy works in proportion to how good of a connection it fosters. You
really want the tool to vanish, and to forget that you're not really in the
same room. For non-work stuff, like talking to my parents, the phone does
decently at that for me, but for trying to collaborate videochat is not very
effective, in my experience.

Understudy's whiteboard/videochat does do it for me.

(As far as Android vs iPad – well, have to start somewhere! Also, I worked at
Apple for 7 years, so it's definitely the environment where I'm quickest.)

~~~
oskarth
What about a web app? Whiteboard and video chat works great there, and it's a
huge market :)

ADDITION: After all, this is what Khan of Khan Academy does (he uses a wacom
though, but then it's a end user decision).

~~~
bridger
I tried to tutor my niece in math using Google Hangouts and various whiteboard
apps, but drawing with the mouse / trackpad was pretty difficult. Now we use
Understudy and it works great, if I do say so myself.

~~~
cma
You and your neice could both buy monoprice drawing tablets for the cost of a
year of understudy. And it would be usable for any learning.

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apenney
This is pretty timely, I tried and failed to get into Chapter 2 of SICP just a
few months ago and eventually got discouraged and ran out of steam. I signed
up for this, maybe it'll help keep me accountable and on track.

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muyuu
Should probably mention somewhere in the link that this is iOS only.

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grannyg00se
If it's a shared whiteboard with embedded video chat how it it tied to a
particular book? They indicate that they are starting with two books for now.

~~~
kenferry
The app looks like this when you launch it:
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/zmj9poc7nic7wzz/Homescreen%20Final...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/zmj9poc7nic7wzz/Homescreen%20Final.png)

If you enroll in SICP, we find you someone to work with.

(You can always just call someone you already know, though.)

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tyrion
Too bad I don't have an iPad, I would love to try out this app :/

Are you planning to develop an android version anytime soon?

~~~
kenferry
At the moment, more trying to make things work well at least _somewhere_. :-)

Would love to do Android, though.

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icosahedronman
We need similar things to help us get through TAOCP, Hacker's Delight and
Programming Pearls. (God so much to do... so little energy/time :( )

~~~
bridger
I can certainly see those as the next texts that we add!

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plinkplonk
Didn't this come up a couple of days ago? I suspect some 'growth hacker' is
finding a way around HN's spam defences.

~~~
dmunoz
Not really. The submitter here replied in a post "Why and How to Start Your
SICP Trek" [0] with how this app could assist, and now it's a blog post.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7546244](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7546244)

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wasd
Just as a few other comments have mentioned, I'm interested but I don't have
an iPad or any tablet for that matter.

