Re: [seul-edu] [Fwd: thoughts on teaching programming]

[Pa McClamrock <pa_mcclamrock@yahoo.com>]

As a self-taught programming hobbyist, I agree entirely with the "simple 
syntax, interpreted language" approach to teaching beginning programming. 
Additional features of the approach that worked for me (starting from zero 
programming knowledge) include lots of emphasis on building GUIs, on use of 
the interpreter in interactive mode for instant results and quick 
modification of rudimentary code, and on creating programs that the student 
(in my case, me) will actually want to use. ("Hello, world" isn't one of 
them, but the sample Tk button widget that displays "Hello, world" can easily 
be modified to execute a program with a single click, which is something I do 
want to do.) I picked Tcl/Tk as my first (and, at least so far, my only) 
programming language; it seems to be pretty good for these purposes. (This is 
*not* intended as an invitation to dispute about whether Tcl/Tk is better for 
these purposes than Python--in case anybody was wondering!)

Dave "Pa" McClamrock

[This e-mail message was written with WISH Supernotepad 0.8.1, a text and 
HTML editor written by me, based on Tk NotePad 0.5 by Joseph Acosta. In some 
future week or month when I get a little more time for programming, version 
0.9.0 will be written and released to the world, though not accompanied by an 
explicit "Hello, world" message.]

On Friday 04 January 2002 18:05, Aaron Malone wrote:

> > I wrote a (short) essay the other day about teaching programming, and
> > why languages like C++ and Java are bad places [to] start.  I'd appreciate
> > if some seul-edu people could take a look and give me their impressions.
> >
> > http://munge.net/thoughts/helloworld.shtml