I recently discovered https://github.com/weirdNox/emacs-gdb/ . The installation is a bit unconventional compared to the usual Emacs package installation process, but works pretty well.
Do Cambridge courses not have labs/projects? I looked at the course materials on a few of the courses and couldn't find any. Or are they given out to students separately?
There are hardware and software labs, which are administered on paper by PhD students. These include(d): ML (the functional programming language), FPGA/soft core development, Java tasks, breadboarding some logic, prolog and probably some different ones now (looks like some machine learning tasks?). Some of them are referenced and described on the links above. There's also a group project in year 2, a dissertation individual project in year 3, and a small holiday project between 1 and 2. Overall, a few students get through it without being able to properly program, but most basically self teach.
There is a system of supervisions, that is a bit like doing homework and going over it in a private (1/2/3 students to one prof) lesson once every two weeks. Sometimes the questions would be standard for a course, sometimes the professors chose their own. They are not necessarily directly tied to the course as lectured.
A course (lightly)based on HtDP is also starting in Coursera in a few days- https://www.coursera.org/course/programdesign. It uses Racket and the first two weeks of videos are already up so you can preview them.
Probably to reduce some friction from the process. They also don't charge a transaction fee(as noted in another comment), so i could see myself using this on my site.
Of course a much useful service would be something like flattr. IIRC, There was some talk about them starting to accept bitcoins but i haven't heard about that lately.
