Setting up development environments may be a complex hurdle for students who approach coding for the first time, and standardising environments among students may be an even greater challenge for teachers. Researchers and teachers tried to mitigate this issue with several solutions, all with different trade-offs: Virtual Machines require higher computing power and transferring large files; containers are complex to install and require substantial data transfer; cloud environments require always-on internet connections. All of these solutions, ultimately, may exclude students with limited internet access, low-powered devices, or lower computer proficiency.

In this contribution, we propose an alternative in the form of Interactive Code Playgrounds (ICPs). ICPs are web pages displayed as slides that include a front-end component enabling code execution and code output display. This architecture simplifies the installation procedure, as students need only a web browser, and gives ICPs the chance to be a more long-lasting technology, as they have minimal external dependencies. Since they are web pages, ICPs can be distributed as links (for students who have always-on internet access) or shared as single files, re-creating the user experience of PDF slide decks. ICPs additionally provide a uniform development environment, independent from the student’s operating system, and are more accessible than PDF slides due to HTML’s underlying tree structure, the inclusion of semantic tags, and text captions.

The demo session will highlight the ICPs’ core benefits, both technical and pedagogical, let attendees test the system, and discuss with the authors how it could be adapted to their purposes.