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[seul-edu] Fw: Re: Language to teach 10 year olds
On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, owner-seul-edu@seul.org wrote:
> From: Scott Raney <raney@metacard.com>
> To: seul-edu@seul.org
> Subject: Re: Language to teach 10 year olds
>
> On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 Manuel Gutierrez Algaba <algaba@gmx.net>
> wrote:
>
> > > > Take a look at the K12 program for our product MetaCard
> > > > (http://www.metacard.com/pi6.html). It's
> scripting-language based GUI
> > > > IDE. The language itself is a superset of the HyperTalk
> language used
> > > > in HyperCard, and is *far* easier to learn than Logo,
> BASIC, Tcl,
> > > > Python, or pretty much any other language you can name.
> And unlike
> > > > most of those, it's a fully integrated graphical
> environment so you
> > > > don't have to teach kids how to create buttons and
> fields by writing
> > > > scripts (do any of the people proposing Tcl and Python
> for kids have
> > > > any clue that learning or doing things in those
> languages is twice as
> > > > much work as in a tool that does layout graphically?)
> > > >
> >
> > I personally *loath* any visual programming language, and
> much more the
> > so-called
> > the graphical languages, some of them with a good
> reputation, why ? Because
> > they don't teach programming and using them help to destroy
> the programmer
> > ( like Visual-*),
>
> Point of clarification here: neither MetaCard nor any of the
> MS
> Visual-* products are really visual languages, which use
> visual
> elements to define programming *logic*, not just layout (this
> distinction is a constant source of bitter debate and
> criticism in
> places like the comp.lang.visual newsgroup, among other
> hang-outs of
> visual programming aficionados).
>
> And I agree with you: to learn programming, students should
> use a tool
> where program logic is defined with a textual language, not a
> visual
> language. VP can be be very efficient for some domains (image
> filtering and processing in systems like AVS being the most
> notable
> example) but there never has been, and probably never will be,
> a
> successful general purpose programming language that works
> this way.
>
> But by the same token, doing UI layout by writing code is also
> exactly
> the wrong approach. It's slow, tedious, and teaches kids
> *nothing*
> about programming. In short, it's a waste of time no matter
> what the
> level of the developer, and any tool that works this way
> exclusively
> should be passed by without giving it a second thought. Now
> it may be
> fine to teach kids programming using Python or Tcl or Perl or
> Pascal
> or any other IDE-less language, but if what you want to teach
> them is
> how to develop graphical applications (which is what is most
> interesting to kids and so most likely to hold their interest
> and also
> most likely to be useful to them in the future), then these
> languages
> should be passed over in favor of products like VB or MetaCard
> or
> HyperStudio which make GUI layout fun, not tedious like it is
> in those
> other language-only tools.
>
> > For example, in a university project of mine, I ended
> producing
> > documentation this way:
> > tcl programm generated python code that generated TeX code
> that was
> > compiled into Postscript.
> > A Windows guy would have used Word. I gained a lot of
> advantage because
> > each level encapsulated
> > certain common problems and patterns within that level. The
> idea of
> > encapsulation of problems is not
> > easy to use in graphical languages, you tend to see at the
> same level.
>
> Certainly treating text and layout information as something to
> be
> manipulated by a programming language is a powerful way of
> looking at
> things. But this is really independent of the anti-visual
> programming
> argument, and instead is more closely related to language
> level (e.g.,
> you wouldn't have done this using Pascal or even BASIC instead
> of
> Python because only a scripting language makes doing this kind
> of
> thing easy).
>
> > - ----
> > MGA
>
> And DraX <drax@whiplash.stampede.org> wrote (sorry, I get the
> digest ;-)
>
> > Hyperlogo.
> >
> > It's the extendable scripting lanauge to hyperstudio. I
> learned it in a
> > couple of days, the syntax is a bit like applescript. It's
> nice and
> > simple, and means kids can design an "interface" and then
> make it so you
> > click the button and it does something you can't do with
> simple
> > hyperstudio actions. Obviously that means windows/mac only
> :(
>
> This is a possibility, but not a very good one. As became
> clear from
> a recent discussion on the HyperStudio mailing list, the
> percentage of
> HyperStudio users who ever get past their first exposure to
> HyperLogo
> is vanishingly small. Compared with *any* modern scripting
> language,
> Logo is hard to learn, hard to use, and just not very
> powerful.
> Regards,
> Scott
>
> ********************************************************
> Scott Raney raney@metacard.com http://www.metacard.com
> MetaCard: You know, there's an easier way to do that...
>
>
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