Re: [pygame] Introduction + call to join project for creating game frameworks

["Jack Nutting" <jnutting@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 10/3/07, Marcus von Appen <mva@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Just to get it right: you want the girls to create games by not
> programming them, because they do not have any interest in programming.
> Wouldn't it be better to change the orientation of the project then?
>
> Encouraging people for something by avoiding stuff they apparently never
> have done before (such as programming) - that just sounds silly to me
> and will mostly cause a negative result in the end, like "you never told
> us that in reality it has to be done _that_ way".

I think Marcus is right on track here.  For anyone who has not
expressed an interest in programming, exposing them to python and
pygame, as nice as it all is, will probably not help much.  You might
want to look at Alice instead:

http://www.alice.org/

And you also might want to take a look at Caitlin Kelleher's thesis
about her derivative project, "Storytelling Alice":

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~caitlin/

These are probably more in line with the sort of programming that you
can get non-programmer teenagers to get into.  These environments
provide more immediate feedback, which gives people quick, tangible
incentives to continue.  They *may* be a little too simplistic for
high school students, I'm not quite sure.  Probably worth looking into
anyway!

-- 
// jack
// http://www.nuthole.com