Training developers: every tool in one place

The hard part is not the code, it is everything around it

Ask any programming trainer what costs them the most time: it is almost never the teaching. It is the environment.

• Installing. Twelve people, twelve different machines, and an interpreter to get running on each one before the first line is written.
• Permissions. In a company, the learner is rarely an administrator of their own machine. Nothing installs.
• "It works on mine." Three versions of Python in the room, and an exercise that passes for one person and fails for another, for reasons that have nothing to do with teaching.
• Mixed levels. In the same group, someone who has coded for ten years and someone opening an editor for the first time.

None of these is fixed by better course material. They are fixed by changing where the code is written.

Writing and running code with nothing to install

EduTools' code editor runs in the browser. The trainer types, the room follows live, and with one click each learner gets their own copy to work on without touching anyone else's.

Four languages actually run, in the browser of whoever wrote the code:

• Python — loops, conditions, functions, lists, dictionaries. Enough for a full introductory course.
• JavaScript — with the console, to see what the program prints.
• HTML and CSS — with an instant preview: the learner writes the page and watches it take shape beside the code.
• SQL — a real SQLite database loaded at startup, with customers, products and orders. Queries return real rows.

And five languages are for writing, not running: PHP, Java, C, C++ and C#. A browser does not compile Java — saying so plainly beats letting people find out mid-session. The editor gives them syntax highlighting, completion and each learner's file; running happens elsewhere.

The editor also does what a modern editor is expected to do: brackets and quotes close themselves with the cursor in between, completion offers the variables the learner has just written — in every language — and, in SQL, the table and column names of the sample database.

Checking what was learned without losing an evening

Programming trainers spend a great deal of time writing questionnaires. EduTools ships thirty-six already written, across twelve technical subjects and three moments of a course.

The twelve subjects: first steps in programming, Python, VBA, Excel (basics), Excel (advanced formulas and pivot tables), SQL, HTML/CSS, WordPress, Word, PowerPoint, the internet and digital literacy, artificial intelligence.

And for each, three moments:

• Positioning, at the start — it does not measure syntax but bearings: vocabulary, misconceptions, habits. Asking for syntax from someone who has never opened an editor only measures its absence.
• Validation, halfway, to find out what landed before going further.
• Final assessment, which serves as evidence of learning in a file.

Each quiz has ten questions and exists in four languages. Each carries a facilitation sheet saying what to look at in the results — not the average, but the question everyone got wrong, which says more about the session than about the group.

They can be played live game-show style, on their own by link or QR code, or replayed as an arcade game. And they can be edited: they are templates, not fixed content.

Preparing a session, and finding it again next time

Preparation for a technical course gets lost in folders fast. Two tools hold it in place.

The exercise bank keeps your exercises with their answers. In the room, you send one out, and the answer only becomes visible when you open it — not before. What you prepare once, you run forever.

The session plan is your day, step by step, with timings. It serves you during the session and serves the paperwork afterwards.

And the question bank pools what you have already written: a question asked in a Python quiz goes into another one without retyping it.

What to do with learners who fall behind — or race ahead

This is the difficulty specific to technical training: the gap inside one group. Three tools absorb it without splitting the room in two.

The guided course alternates explanation and checking question. The learner moves at their own pace, the server marks, and you see who got stuck where. The fast one does not wait for you; the struggling one blocks nobody.

The branching scenario puts the learner in front of a situation — a production bug, a customer reporting a fault — and makes them choose. Every choice leads to a consequence. It is a case study, not a multiple-choice question.

And flashcards solve the problem of technical vocabulary, which is learned by repetition rather than by explanation.

The paperwork, which should not cost you an evening

An independent trainer or a training centre does not live on teaching alone. Two obligations come back with every session.

Electronic attendance: half-day sheets, an individual link or QR code, a signature by finger or mouse, and a compliant PDF at the end. On site and remotely.

The satisfaction survey: straight after the session, or three months later. By name with reminders, or collective and anonymous for large groups.

Both produce the documents an audit asks for.

Where to start

There is no required order, and above all: creating a room is not compulsory. A quiz, a code editor or an exercise runs on its own, by link or QR code, with nobody having to create an account.

If you teach code, the shortest path is this one:

1. Open a code editor on the language you teach and write three lines. Your learners watch them arrive.
2. Give them a copy: they write, they run, and you read back each person's file.
3. Take the positioning quiz for your subject and play it at the start of your next session.
4. Add attendance when the paperwork asks for it.

The free account covers the first three, with no card and no time limit.