how to think like a computer scientist interactive edition

After hosting the interactive edition of How to Think like a Computer Scientist on the Google app engine at thinkcspy.appspot.com for over a year, we finally made the switchover to a new domain.  As of today all requests to thinkcspy will be automatically redirected to http://interactivepython.org

This new domain, is hosted by Webfaction.com.  They have very reasonable hosting rates, along with plenty of bandwidth and disk space.   I have more control over the development platform that I use, I get to keep my data in a real relational database (postgresql) where I can write queries and export my data as much as I want, and finally, if I ever need to move from Webfaction, I own the domain and can move it with me, and I won't need to go through this name change again.

For those of you who have used the thinkcspy site, you will notice a few upgrades to the content of the book have taken place.  In addition, we are now hosting another book along side thinkcspy.  So we now have coverage for both CS1 and CS2.

CS1 -- http://interactivepython.org/courselib/static/thinkcspy/index.html  

CS2 -- http://interactivepython.org/courselib/static/pythonds/index.html  

The CS2 book is based on our paperback book, Problem Solving with Algorithms and Data Structures using Python by Brad Miller and David Ranum.  Our forward thinking publisher has given us permission to convert the paper book into an interactive version and make it available online!

The other great thing about the move to interactivepython.org is that you can now host your own course.  That is you can use one of our books online, but you are the instructor, so you can grade homework assignments, and look at activity reports for the students in your class.  So far we have 20 different institutions hosting one of the two books for a course currently,  or for the upcoming fall term.  The links to create your own course are right there on the home page, so if you are interested in using this site for a course go right ahead.

The one downside to this move is that I did not migrate any of the data from the old thinkcspy site.  So if you have saved programs there you will need to recreate them at the new site.  I gave people plenty of notice about the move, so I'm hoping this won't turn into a big issue.  If it is, let me know, and I'll try to pull your code out of the google datastore for you.

The second issue with the move is that I don't use google accounts  anymore.  If you want to save your programs you will need to create an account on the site.

If you have a link to thinkcspy.appspot.com on any pages you control, please make the change to point to the new domain and location.  Thanks!

If you are interested in contributing to the project, have a book you would like to host, or are just interested in how we are doing this, you can check out the code on github:  http://github.com/bnmnetp/runestone   If you don't want to go that far, but have assignments, or assessment questions you would like to contribute, please contact me!