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How computer programming languages for kids have evolved and where they're going

blog.makewonder.com

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Re: How computer programming languages for kids have evolved and where they're going

#31

Post by chongli »

kzhahou wrote: post #23

Why is BASIC totally left out? An entire generation was inspired by power-on basic in C64 and other platforms. More than just "inspired"... Some huge amount of today's technology wouldn't exist otherwise. I know I'm stuck in the past, but that's what I want for my kids. Flip open the laptop and boom, theres my programming environment, except now with easier graphics/sound APIs. Anyone know how to get this, without bu…

It's really hard to do something like that with kids today. They have so many options now between consoles, iPads, etc. There's way too much instant gratification. You're never again going to see a generation that has the patience to type in the source code to a game published in a magazine.

Re: How computer programming languages for kids have evolved and where they're going

#32

Post by snerbles »

jerluc wrote: post #16
methehack wrote: post #5

I've always been suspicious of the looks-like-an-animal-with-a-name-and-a-smiley-face-I'm-a-grown-up-and-this-is-what-kids-like approach. I remember one of the coolest things about the apple II was that you could 'poke' the right memory address and get the speaker to click. That was magic when I was 12 and it didn't need a friendly name and a stupid grin. Until they're old enough for K&R (12?, 13?, 14?), maybe they s…

I was certainly in a similar boat (though a later generation of computers) whereby I found around age 9 that "poking" at a computer (either plugging random things in, or clicking random buttons or keys) enough yielded some interesting/mildly entertaining results. Of course, many times, these results ended with being grounded for breaking something, but nonetheless, the endless possibilities of random keystrokes and m…

At 14 my first programming class was in C at a local community college. One of the texts was K&R 2nd edition.

So, if unusual, it's not totally unprecedented.

Re: How computer programming languages for kids have evolved and where they're going

#33

Post by snerbles »

stephengillie wrote: post #19
noamyoungerm wrote: post #3

Why aren't kids able to read text written in rows like everyone else? Programming languages just for kids seems mostly like a way to limit them.

The first PC videogame I ever saw was a gorilla throwing a barrel at buildings. It was written in BASIC and came with our 286 back in 1989. I was really excited to learn how the monkey was drawn - out of the same ASCII blocks as everything else, obviously, but how ? - and excitedly opened the file in a text editor. It was a little overwhelming to my 7-year-old self to see just how many little subroutines and subproce…

Gorillas for QBASIC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorillas_(video_game)

Re: How computer programming languages for kids have evolved and where they're going

#34

Post by akkartik »

It is a perpetual puzzle to me why learning programming isn't considered to involve learning about functions. In my experience the hardest thing about programming is teaching people the facility of "uncoiling" in their heads the coiled representation of a loop or repeated calls of a function. That in turn requires as a prerequisite the ability to consider a function being called with multiple different inputs, and hold multiple possible situations as you build the function. Until you attack this, the hard problem of teaching programming, anything you come up with will only help learners with the first few hours of their learning. Which is invaluable, don't get me wrong. But what then? There's got to be something better than, "ok you're done with blocks and turtles, now go learn JavaScript."

(I have a start of a solution to attack this problem: http://akkartik.name/post/mu)

Re: How computer programming languages for kids have evolved and where they're going

#35

Post by narag »

jerluc wrote: post #2

Does anyone know of any published research on the efficacy of this "block based programming" standard the author mentions? I can't seem to find anything on the subject in the Scratch website's "Research" section ( https://scratch.mit.edu/info/research/ ), and in their early papers they simply list it as a "core feature" rather than explaining why they use blocks in the first place.

I mentored a CoderDojo group for Scratch, AppInventor and HTML/JS for a year (two years ago, so details are a little blurry now) and in my humble opinion the "boxes" or "blocks" are not that good. Not because the idea is bad, but because the implementation is terrible.

It's true that children have a hard time typing, but it's not because they can't type fast. The reason is that they don't know how to delete, navigate using keys, or what tab and intro are supposed to do.

The boxes are painful to manage. The only advantage is that they can use them with the mouse, that they seem to be much more familiar than with the keyboard.

Some pitfalls:

* Not obvious what kind of item should go in every placeholder.

* You need to learn in what tab page is every kind of item.

* As soon as the program is bigger than a simple proof of concept, it's difficult to read, understand or modify.

* There is some model for moving stuff around the screen that it's not very intuitive and you can't easily choose an alternative.

* The event model is probably not what a beginner should start with.

A better approach would be to use the keyboard, at least to do the same as with the mouse. Every pro knows that keyboard is way better. Don't let the cursor go out of boxes maybe. I've sit on the idea of making such an editor in JS for a year... anytime soon :-)

Oh and BTW, the children did just fine with JavaScript, once they learned keyboard basics.

Re: How computer programming languages for kids have evolved and where they're going

#36

Post by duaneb »

jameshart wrote: post #26
kzhahou wrote: post #23

Why is BASIC totally left out? An entire generation was inspired by power-on basic in C64 and other platforms. More than just "inspired"... Some huge amount of today's technology wouldn't exist otherwise. I know I'm stuck in the past, but that's what I want for my kids. Flip open the laptop and boom, theres my programming environment, except now with easier graphics/sound APIs. Anyone know how to get this, without bu…

Hit F12 in a web browser. Hit / in minecraft (more effective if you install scriptcraft first). Open up a terminal window.

...none of these are "turn on and play". For any of the above, what's the command to draw a triangle?

Re: How computer programming languages for kids have evolved and where they're going

#37

Post by codingdave »

jerluc wrote: post #2

Does anyone know of any published research on the efficacy of this "block based programming" standard the author mentions? I can't seem to find anything on the subject in the Scratch website's "Research" section ( https://scratch.mit.edu/info/research/ ), and in their early papers they simply list it as a "core feature" rather than explaining why they use blocks in the first place.

Because children too young to even type their own name on a login screen can still understand and do block-based visual programming.

So, no I don't know of formal research - but that answer is the experience shared with me by teachers who are working with 5 year olds on these concepts.

Re: How computer programming languages for kids have evolved and where they're going

#38

Post by akkartik »

kzhahou wrote: post #23

Why is BASIC totally left out? An entire generation was inspired by power-on basic in C64 and other platforms. More than just "inspired"... Some huge amount of today's technology wouldn't exist otherwise. I know I'm stuck in the past, but that's what I want for my kids. Flip open the laptop and boom, theres my programming environment, except now with easier graphics/sound APIs. Anyone know how to get this, without bu…

I have a little side project in this vein: http://akkartik.name/post/mu (apologies for the spam; I already posted my link elsewhere in this thread). No graphics or sound yet, unfortunately. I've been using it to teach long-distance, so the way we work is by running it on a VPS over a shared tmux. So it's completely text-mode. But in text mode you can do a lot with just raw cursor mode and 256 foreground/background colors. One of my students just built a card game with it.

(Another interesting feature of it: the programming environment is itself built in the Basic-like language. So there's a large example app that comes with the repo, along with a few small ones.)

Re: How computer programming languages for kids have evolved and where they're going

#39

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

kzhahou wrote: post #23

Why is BASIC totally left out? An entire generation was inspired by power-on basic in C64 and other platforms. More than just "inspired"... Some huge amount of today's technology wouldn't exist otherwise. I know I'm stuck in the past, but that's what I want for my kids. Flip open the laptop and boom, theres my programming environment, except now with easier graphics/sound APIs. Anyone know how to get this, without bu…

PICO-8? Not BASIC but Lua, but I've had a lot of fun with it and it's very easy to get into.

Re: How computer programming languages for kids have evolved and where they're going

#40

Post by Lerc »

methehack wrote: post #5

I've always been suspicious of the looks-like-an-animal-with-a-name-and-a-smiley-face-I'm-a-grown-up-and-this-is-what-kids-like approach. I remember one of the coolest things about the apple II was that you could 'poke' the right memory address and get the speaker to click. That was magic when I was 12 and it didn't need a friendly name and a stupid grin. Until they're old enough for K&R (12?, 13?, 14?), maybe they s…

I think they have their place, and they probably have a lot of evolving left to do, but I think they shouldn't be the sole focus of programming for kids.

I have taught kids as young as eight JavaScript. They really take to it. JavaScript is not an ideal language for teaching beginners, but the availability means you can do it anywhere.

I made a little library to provide easy to use functions and start with programs of the sort I would have written in basic when I was young.

This is the program I start kids off with

http://fingswotidun.com/code/index.php/TinyDraw (You can edit and run the code from within the wiki)

The etch-a-sketch program is a program kids like playing with and it is small enough that they can look at it and understand how it works.

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