We also use Sass and Bootstrap.ĮdX.org is hosted in AWS. On the front-end, we have a lot of legacy Backbone.js and Underscore.js, but are slowly moving more and more to React. We use Django for our web applications, including the Django REST framework.
Robert: Python is used for the vast majority of code for Open edX.
– What are the main languages and technologies generally used at edX? Given the pervasiveness of Python in our work, I’d say nearly every engineer is a Python developer. We’re up to approximately 150 if you add contractors and regular contributors in the community. Ned: We have about 80 in engineers in Cambridge.
One of our challenges as an open source project is, how can we keep our own site running well while also delivering this complex suite of software to other sites, and accepting contributions from them? We don’t know the best answer yet, but we’re continuing to work on it. We’re a little different from many other open source projects, in that we run a site ourselves with the code we are writing. Most of the proprietary code concerns how edX markets and lists its courses, and Open edX includes an open source version used by our community members. Well over 90% of what edX develops is open source. Here you will find 206 repositories, including many Django packages and other libraries that edX has created to support the entire development lifecycle. This is all part of our mission to increase access to education for everyone everywhere.Īll of the Open edX source code can be found on github at.
We also provide free tools for others to run their own online education.
We are making a push to find more adopters, and they are easy to find, so the numbers keep going up! As a non-profit, we provide free online education.
Ned: There are over 800 sites running Open edX, with over 15,000 courses available across the globe. – Tell us about how edX is organized as an open source project. These subsystems are also made available through the larger Open edX infrastructure. There are also many supporting subsystems, for example, for accessing analytics or for discovering courses. Studio is an authoring tool used to create the courses that are run and taught through the LMS. The core of the Open edX platform, the open source platform upon which edX.org is built, includes two products: the Learning Management System (LMS) and Studio. We offer courses from our partners from many of the top universities across the globe, as well as other nonprofits and institutions. Its mission is to increase access to everyone, everywhere. Today, it is one of the leading MOOC providers, and the only one that is both a nonprofit and open source. Robert: edX was initially started by MIT and Harvard in 2012. – For those of us who are only slightly familiar with edX, could you tell us what it’s all about? I loved edX’s mission, and also its open source approach. Ned: I’ve been deeply embedded in the Python community for a long time. Like most edX employees, I was so excited about joining a nonprofit with an incredible mission and commitment to open source. It turns out that writing software to facilitate teaching is much easier than teaching, so I next worked on a K-12 LMS for many years before finally landing at edX as a software architect. At this point, I decided to try teaching Math for a year. I then switched to a product for administrators and teachers of pre-school. I started off my career coding software used for management training. Robert: After getting my CS degree, I have spent my entire career working on software related to education. – Hi Robert and Ned, could you tell us a little bit about yourselves? Many edX core developers are using P圜harm, so we’ll also learn what developers value the most in it. We’re going to learn about the project, how they develop, what their technology preferences are, and some of the reasons they chose Python as the main language. Ned is on the Open edX team, advocating for the community using the software. Robert is a core contributor to the Open edX LMS and Studio products, as well as their supporting infrastructure. In this interview with Robert Raposa and Ned Batchelder, software architects at edX, we’re going to look under the hood of the edX project, where more than 95% of the entire codebase is in Python.