Ensuring a smooth workshop experience

While preparing a workshop for Swiftable, I wondered how the attendees could verify that they were ready to continue with the next topic. Jumping to the next topic with their setup in an invalid state can make a difference between enjoying the workshop from beginning to end and feeling completely stuck and lost. To tackle it, I came up with the idea of providing the developers with a script that they can run at the end of every section:

bash <(curl -sSL https://url-to-server.com/assert.sh) 1

1 is the number of the section that they just completed. Note how convenient it is to run it because you only need bash in your system, which is a safe assumption to make. I believe the fewer system requirements for the workshop and everything that surrounds it, the better. As a fallback, I provide a Git repository and a commit sha at the end of every section that developers can check out to continue with the workshop.

I’ll test the method in a couple of weeks and report back.