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Bret Victor: Learnable Programming

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Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming

#51

Post by andolanra »

As far as learning is concerned, I think this is a wonderful idea. I say this in part because I myself learned on Logo before I taught people everything from Java to Scheme, and even the simplest visualization tools could help immeasurably. For example, we had a tool called the Replacement Modeller that would visualize evaluation and substitution in pure-functional Scheme snippets, which was great for stepping through complex code and showing a student what was happening, and it was rocks-and-sticks next to the things Victor is proposing here.

I'm interested, though, in what the ramifications are for advanced, complex programming. I am personally a Haskeller, and advanced Haskell regularly deals with incredibly abstract, difficult-to-visualize structures. Monads are infamous in this regard, and monads are embarrassingly trivial next to, say, comonads or iteratees. I have difficulty imagining this sort of model expanded beyond elementary visualization techniques, and certainly cannot imagine how one might represent and interact with these code structures.

Victor seems to believe that visual, interactive systems such as these should become standard for all programmers, c.f. the section 'These Are Not Training Wheels.' The idea seems powerful, but: how?

Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming

#54

Post by yaxu »

Bret Victor is annoyed at his ideas being labelled live coding, but that's what they are.

Live coding environments are pretty diverse, and there is plenty of prior art for code timeline scrubbing, tangible values, auto-completion, the manipulation of history, and many of the other features that Bret argues for.

Some examples: Field - http://vimeo.com/3001412 SchemeBricks - http://blip.tv/nebogeo/dave-griffiths-chmod-x-art-3349411 Overtone - http://vimeo.com/22798433

Live coding isn't just about automatic code interpretation.

That said, other than his strawman beating, I otherwise agree with his thesis, and enjoy his examples. To advance programming, we can change who programs, how they do it and what they do it for. All of this is up for grabs. However, I do think that social interaction in programming environments is an important piece which he seems to be missing.

Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming

#56

Post by pwang »

NickPollard wrote: post #48

I think this article raises some brilliant points, and is very well written, but I also feel that it falls short of the mark Bret was aiming for. As he himself alludes to, most of what he is teach is not programming - it is individual actions. Just as being taught the meaning of individual words does not teach you to write, being taught what certain functions or statements do does not teach you to program. What is im…

> I'm sorry Bret, but Alan is right. You do need to be able to think like a machine.

I would like to bring in another Alan Perlis quote: "You cannot move from the informal to the formal by formal means."

Programming is the art of formalizing things to a point where they are executable. Executable by what is the point of contention here. I think you are saying (and I somewhat agree) that ultimately your programs and ideas have to execute on a real machine, and as a programmer you need to understand and model that machine.

OTOH, perhaps what Bret is arguing is that we should make better machines and software abstractions.

Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming

#57

Post by ChuckMcM »

I really enjoyed Bret's article. I don't necessarily agree with all of it but the main argument is quite sound.

Bret writes: "People understand what they can see." which is true for some people but not true for all people. I've got one daughter who is very verbal, one very visual. They learn differently. This in a minor nit though, his exploration of the 'code' / 'example' model is good.

I particularly liked the commentary on something like:

   ellipse(60, 50, 50, 100) 
            \   \   \    \
             \   \   \    +- What does this mean?
              \   \   +----- Or this,
               \   +-------- Or this,
                +----------- Or this?
(We'll see how that comes out in the formatting)

TOPS-20 had a really interesting macro language for programming commands, it was the inspiration for a lot of self-describing command line interfaces like the ones made popular on Cisco gear. Basically you could write it like

   DRAW ellipse AT X=60 Y=50 THAT IS 50 HIGH, 100 WIDE
But all of the 'fill text' was really unnecessary for the parser so if you wrote:

   ellipse 60 50 50 100
It would be just as intelligible. The point being that the training wheels got out of your way when ever you wanted them too, and if you were ever stuck you could type ? and it would tell you what your choices were.

Not enough learning environments put this sort of dynamically sizing help into the system where it is needed such that it helps novices and doesn't slow down experts.

Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming

#58

Post by marcioaguiar »

bretthopper wrote: post #24

There's already two comments here about being "harsh" or "ungracious" towards Khan Academy which is ridiculous. The usual HN article that contains criticisms is usually limited to that. Some rant that took 10 minutes to write and contains nothing constructive. Bret Victor put an insane amount of time into this (I can only assume) and is truly advancing mindsets about programming tools and learning. We should all be t…

It's important to point out that was Bret Victor that created this concept from which Kahn Academy took inspiration from.

https://vimeo.com/36579366 http://ejohn.org/blog/introducing-khan-cs/

Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming

#59

Post by andybak »

If you really want to label:

    ellipse(65,50,60,60)
Wouldn't using something like Python's keyword arguments better than some external labelling?

    ellipse(radius_x=65, radius_y=50, center_x=60, center_y=60)
More characters but these are just training wheels. Once the learner understands the basics you can do away with them.

API's and libraries should be designed to allow both forms. Everyone is a beginner with some aspects of their craft. I'm a beginner when I use a library I'm not familiar with...

Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming

#60

Post by zethraeus »

phleet wrote: post #25
modeless wrote: post #20

As much as I love Bret Victor's ideas, I feel this is a bit harsh on Khan Academy. There's nothing wrong with criticism, but it shouldn't be your only kind of feedback. Even if Khan Academy did nothing right (which I think is clearly false) they should at least deserve praise for attacking the problem at all, when so many people are content to ignore it. If you're trying to lead a revolution in programming, witholdin…

Speaking as one of the interns that worked on the project, I don't really feel that this was too harsh. Had he focused on all the things that were wrong with it and torn it to pieces, I would be inclined to agree, but he's provided a number of very specific ways in which the environment could be improved. Some of these ideas were considered and not implemented for practical reasons, others were left out due to time c…

I'm curious, were you guys ever in contact with Bret during the project?
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