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Apple launches coding camps for kids in its retail stores

techcrunch.com

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Re: Apple launches coding camps for kids in its retail stores

#21

Post by melling »

dublinben wrote: post #3

I don't think it's necessarily fair to call this program "philanthropic." It's teaching kids how to use proprietary and commercial software, like iMovie, iBooks, and Tynker, when completely free alternatives exist like Blender and Scratch. This is essentially building a new generation of future Apple customers.

Swift is free and cross platform. I'm sure after 6 months of Swift, that C#, JavaScript, etc will be much easier to learn.

The syntax isn't as important as the concepts: loops, conditionals, functions, types, etc

Re: Apple launches coding camps for kids in its retail stores

#22

Post by [deleted] »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #16
dublinben wrote: post #3

I don't think it's necessarily fair to call this program "philanthropic." It's teaching kids how to use proprietary and commercial software, like iMovie, iBooks, and Tynker, when completely free alternatives exist like Blender and Scratch. This is essentially building a new generation of future Apple customers.

Yeah, it's a shame the skills you get from learning how to program on one platform don't translate to any other platform.

[deleted]

Re: Apple launches coding camps for kids in its retail stores

#24

Post by Michie »

I like Apple's initiative but why use a third party application instead of their Swift Playground? It seems more appropriate and based on what's shown on WWDC, it's not that hard to learn.

This is a possible sign that Tynker can be bought by Apple soon to be integrated with Swift Playground.

Re: Apple launches coding camps for kids in its retail stores

#25

Post by stormbrew »

danso wrote: post #14

Ironically, I sometimes fear Apple would be the harbinger of programming's death, what with how much can be done via consumer-friendly app and touch-screens. It didn't help hearing about OSX becoming macOS, which would be well in line with a dystopian future in which the only people who need to know about plaintext and file systems are the full-time Apple programmers. But this sounds like a great initiative...and als…

Can you expand on why you thought the OSX -> macOS change would lead to anything in particular like that? I don't really understand how.

Re: Apple launches coding camps for kids in its retail stores

#26

Post by schoen »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #17
danso wrote: post #14

Ironically, I sometimes fear Apple would be the harbinger of programming's death, what with how much can be done via consumer-friendly app and touch-screens. It didn't help hearing about OSX becoming macOS, which would be well in line with a dystopian future in which the only people who need to know about plaintext and file systems are the full-time Apple programmers. But this sounds like a great initiative...and als…

I think the invention of the GUI killed the dream of mainstream programming. If computers had to be interacted with in ways that resembled programming - like a UNIX prompt - then people would be more used to the way computers actually work, with functions and parameters instead of icons and settings menus. I really hope that raspberry PI gets more mainstream appeal as time goes on. I fear the separation between coder…

I believe as you do and in basically the same terms, but, having had forms of this discussion for much of my life, I've encountered a counterargument that I thought I'd bring up as a devil's advocate:

> the way computers actually work, with functions and parameters instead of icons and settings menus

Isn't "the way computers actually work" at a fundamental level about electrical engineering, or at least about machine instructions? If you're using Unix commands, hasn't a whole lot of work already been done to create the abstractions of pipes, file descriptors, files, filesystems, and so on? Is it clear that there is some sense in which these abstractions are faithful and true to the machine and technology, where other software abstractions are not?

Re: Apple launches coding camps for kids in its retail stores

#27

Post by sxg »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #17
danso wrote: post #14

Ironically, I sometimes fear Apple would be the harbinger of programming's death, what with how much can be done via consumer-friendly app and touch-screens. It didn't help hearing about OSX becoming macOS, which would be well in line with a dystopian future in which the only people who need to know about plaintext and file systems are the full-time Apple programmers. But this sounds like a great initiative...and als…

I think the invention of the GUI killed the dream of mainstream programming. If computers had to be interacted with in ways that resembled programming - like a UNIX prompt - then people would be more used to the way computers actually work, with functions and parameters instead of icons and settings menus. I really hope that raspberry PI gets more mainstream appeal as time goes on. I fear the separation between coder…

Without a GUI, mainstream computing probably wouldn't even exist let alone mainstream programming.

Re: Apple launches coding camps for kids in its retail stores

#28

Post by [deleted] »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #17
danso wrote: post #14

Ironically, I sometimes fear Apple would be the harbinger of programming's death, what with how much can be done via consumer-friendly app and touch-screens. It didn't help hearing about OSX becoming macOS, which would be well in line with a dystopian future in which the only people who need to know about plaintext and file systems are the full-time Apple programmers. But this sounds like a great initiative...and als…

I think the invention of the GUI killed the dream of mainstream programming. If computers had to be interacted with in ways that resembled programming - like a UNIX prompt - then people would be more used to the way computers actually work, with functions and parameters instead of icons and settings menus. I really hope that raspberry PI gets more mainstream appeal as time goes on. I fear the separation between coder…

[deleted]

Re: Apple launches coding camps for kids in its retail stores

#29

Post by dclowd9901 »

dublinben wrote: post #3

I don't think it's necessarily fair to call this program "philanthropic." It's teaching kids how to use proprietary and commercial software, like iMovie, iBooks, and Tynker, when completely free alternatives exist like Blender and Scratch. This is essentially building a new generation of future Apple customers.

I'm not sure I see the relevance of the program's proprietariness vs. its philanthropic value

Re: Apple launches coding camps for kids in its retail stores

#30

Post by glhaynes »

Michie wrote: post #24

I like Apple's initiative but why use a third party application instead of their Swift Playground? It seems more appropriate and based on what's shown on WWDC, it's not that hard to learn. This is a possible sign that Tynker can be bought by Apple soon to be integrated with Swift Playground.

Swift Playgrounds only runs on the iOS 10 beta and is itself still in a prerelease form.
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