Site Presented By
Saturday, Nov 7, 2009
Very good points.
I have found one that works on a WIN platform.
FBIde an open-source IDE for the FreeBASIC compiler
Interactive with good debug
credits: programmers
VonGodric - head programmer, project administrator and founder of the project
dumbledore - code exporting and formatting routines
Madedog - internationalization (i18n) modules
roadknight, you couldn't have read many. Squeak and Logo have been mentioned several times.
So was LambdaMOO. And lots of other good suggestions...
Mathematica would be another possibility, if only it were free - an ideal teaching language which could cover the needs of several parts of a school curriculum. The notebook presentation format is a perfect medium for introducing the concept of computer-created graphics, sound and animation.
Come to think of it I'm surprised Wolfram Research isn't already in the K-12 space.
I started out in 1975 programming in BASIC, mostly because I wanted to learn how to program the neat games that were available for us to play. By 1980 and the advent of the micro-computer, I was an expert at programming. Unfortunately, that was just not true. A technical school offered courses in programming and after enrolling in the program there was little in my former knowledege to aid me. Top-down programming concepts replaced spaghetti programming and different languages taught me that there was much more to learn. By 1985, I was deep into Assembly language.
We now have languages that are really powerful and tap into libraries that do much of the mundane work. Once you have programmed graphic routines in Assembler you appreciate the ease that GDI2 or DirectX provide. Using line oriented languages are a bad way to learn programming. I don't need to know how to make a wheel to build a cart if a wheel maker provides me what I need to know about his wheels to make my cart work. Almost all programming now use the concept of objects.
Languages like Visual Basic and C++ are better alternatives. A child can learn the basics of programming and when they've learned the mechanics then explore OOP.
After reading David Brin's essay Why Johnny can't code, I wondered if he and his son have tried Alice 2.0, available for free from alice.org? I expect it isn't as low-level as he might want, but it does teach the "line-by-line" approach to programming he advocates, complete with variables, if statements, while loops, for loops, and so on. It also has a unique doTogether statement that (unlike an older language like BASIC) performs the statements within it in parallel.
What really sets Alice apart from other languages is its problem domain: 3D animation.
Alice provides a person with an empty 3D virtual world, and a library of about 1000 objects (ranging from castles and dragons, to sky scrapers and space shuttles, to people, ponds and plants, to ...). Alice lets one build 3D sets by dragging and positioning these objects within the 3D world.
To animate the objects in one's world, one must program them. 3D animation is thus the motivation for learning to program. To keep a lack of typing skills from preventing a person from learning to program, Alice provides a drag-and-drop coding environment that makes it nearly impossible to commit a typing error.
Alice comes with a built-in 4-part tutorial that launches the first time you run the program. My 8-year-old finished this tutorial, and was immediately able to write simple multi-line programs. From there, he is moving on to non-linear programming concepts (if statements, loops, etc) and more advanced topics. There are books available (confession: I am the author of one) from www.course.com and www.prenhall.com that can help a student learn more.
The past 3 summers, I have used Alice very successfully to teach the basic concepts of computer programming to boys and girls, ages 10 and up. Alice's 3D environment is all the motivation these students need; some wanted to skip their snack breaks to keep programming!
As a computer science educator, what I find most fascinating is that when one of my students makes a programming mistake in Alice, the mistake often results in the animated object doing something that is anatomically impossible. Because of this, the results of mistakes are often hilarious, so that instead of being embarrassed and discouraged by such mistakes, students call to their neighbors, "Look at this!" and they all laugh at an absurd animation. Alice thus changes the programming atmosphere from one in which mistakes are "errors" to one in which trial-and-error, exploration, and self-discovery are encouraged.
I recommend that Brin and interested readers give Alice a try. It is free, fun, and a great way for a child to learn about programming while expressing his or her creativity!
I made sure to read all the way throgh to the end of your article before posting my response.
Simply put. Nothing hapens by accident.
Consider the timing of BASIC's disapearanse from Redmond.
It didn't hapen when the GUI was added (Even Windows 3.11 ran on a version of DOS that includes BASIC).
It didn't happen when the OS booted to the GUI by default and made getting to a command prompt awkward. Windows 95, 98 and ME all include BASIC on the CD.
It didn't happen when they went to 32 Bit programing. Windows NT had BASIC available.
Nope. It vanished when they realised that the greatest threat to the growth in profits came from hobby programmers, writing open source software. A significant portion of those hobbyists are people who learned to program and enjoy programing. However they are payed to do something else.
How do you fight that? One way is to reduce the number of trained programmers and the number of people exposed to programing in any way. With a small supply of available talent those companies who already have the cash to employ the majority Computer Science graduates will have a substantial long term advantage.
Or maybe I am just a conspiracy nut and the lords of IT just can't be bothered to maintain something that "nobody uses" (like BASIC) when they have cool new stuff to work on (Like the 2 person version of Solitaire, allegedly shipping with Windows Vista ;)
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The Maine fight was supposed to be the dress rehearsal for repealing California's Prop. 8 -- but gay marriage lost
Once one obtains Seriousness credentials in the Washington media, they are irrevocable no matter one's conduct.
Salon headlines in your mailbox
