Frequently Asked Questions

The topics application is the main focus of the CS Unplugged website, as it contains the majority of educational material for the project.

What is a Key?

We use the term “key” to specify a field name. Keys map to particular values (which range from learning outcome text, to the structure and attributes of a lesson).

A key is a short label for something, containing only letters, numbers, or hyphens. In our system, a key must be no longer than 50 characters, and use hyphens instead of underscores.

These are valid examples of keys:

  • algorithms

  • binary-numbers

  • challenge-2

These are invalid examples of keys:

  • Algorithms

  • Binary Numbers

  • Binary_Numbers

  • binary_numbers

  • challenge 2

Keys must be exact matches to work, for example, if you name a lesson bits-and-bytes, referencing it in another configuration file as bytes-and-bits will raise an error.

See also:

What is an Application?

Django contains ‘applications’ which are Python packages that provide some set of features. Each large part/chunk of the CS Unplugged is a separate application. Read this section in our project structure guide for details of the applications used in the CS Unplugged system.

What is a Virtual Environment?

A Virtual Environment is a tool to keep the dependencies required by different projects in separate places, by creating virtual Python environments for them. It solves the “Project X depends on version 1.x but, Project Y needs 4.x” dilemma, and keeps your global site-packages directory clean and manageable.

See also: