The Little Coder's Predicament • Hacker News Board

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#11

Post by burke » Wed, Feb 11, 2009, 5:47 AM UTC

I learned to program on my TI-83. Over the past few decades, computers have built more and more walls between typical users and programming, whereas on my calculator, it was right there... on a whim, I could, say, make a program to calculate the area of a trapezoid. At the time, if you asked me to do the same thing on a desktop computer, you'd be getting a blank stare.

Graphing calculators today are essentially the new programmer's playground that all computers were 20ish years ago.

Why seems to be making great progress toward reversing this change with Shoes and Hackety Hack, but I think the ultimate solution right now would be some sort of programming environment built into iPod Touches. (EDIT: Heh, I stopped reading before the end. I guess that was his idea too.)

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#12

Post by psyklic » Wed, Feb 11, 2009, 5:48 AM UTC

I miss how difficult it is to get into graphics programming nowadays. DirectX and OpenGL have somewhat high learning curves for new programmers (especially kids). Even the "simplified" graphics libraries are usually OOPified and take some learning.

I miss the days of mode 13h!

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#13

Post by diN0bot » Wed, Feb 11, 2009, 5:50 AM UTC

gcheong wrote: post #3

The one thing that seems to be missing is the idea of including a programming tutorial with the pc or console. What if your XBox came with a manual called "Programming the XBox - a tutorial introduction"? When I got my Apple II+ it came with a programming manual on Apple BASIC presumably because that was part of the reason for the machine's existence - as an easily accessible platform for people to learn to program o…

iphones kinda come with a 'how to program an iphone app' tutorial, where by come with i mean the internet. presumably most of the comments here are focused more on the existence of tutorials at all, not on implementation. still, the state of open api's is growing tremendously (twitter, facebooki don't get what people are talking about. maybe that's because i'm not a video game or linux nerd. i don't like c or assembler or l33t h4x0ring. i mean, i'm not very good at it. but in the past 2 years i've learned how easy it is to program and make things. wow--i can make a twitter app. wow--i can make a robot. wow--i can make a real website. there are so many opportunities that weren't available before, especially in the realm of tutorials and thoughtful introductions.

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#14

Post by diN0bot » Wed, Feb 11, 2009, 5:52 AM UTC

psyklic wrote: post #12

I miss how difficult it is to get into graphics programming nowadays. DirectX and OpenGL have somewhat high learning curves for new programmers (especially kids). Even the "simplified" graphics libraries are usually OOPified and take some learning. I miss the days of mode 13h!

try scratch or alice for kids programming try processing or openframeworks for graphics

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#15

Post by diN0bot » Wed, Feb 11, 2009, 5:58 AM UTC

jballanc wrote: post #9

diN0bot wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's also relevant. mac's come with sqlite3, python, a terminal, a decent developing environment (extra cd). it's probably not a big deal for windows folks to download languages and developing environments, too, to say nothing of ubuntu. the web is a trove of treasure tutorials. open source and the web are thriving, the community is more inclusive and inviting than ever. more and more i run into artists, non-video ga…

Sure, but I think _why's point is less about availability and more about approachability. As a 10 year old playing with BASIC, it took me all of a day or two to begin writing my first text adventure game. A few weeks after that, and I was writing graphical interfaces. Available tools are worth nothing if it's not painfully obvious how to make them do something interesting...and you have to remember that interesting i…

today's 10 year old is probably writing a twitter script in python in 2 days.

as a non-video-game-playing female i didn't find programming approachable then, but i have found it approachable in the past 2 years. i can't speak for 10 year olds, though.

there are numerous improvements in the approachability aspect (scratch, alice, processing, arduino on the educational front). i suspect approachability had little to do with you success as a 10 year old. your argument is simply that BASIC was available when you were 10 and now you can't think of modern fun tools and fun tasks. letsmakerobots and instructables come to mind as good starting places.

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#16

Post by dhouston » Wed, Feb 11, 2009, 6:00 AM UTC

the fundamentals haven't changed; the gateway drugs are just different :)

php and rails tutorials, html, flash, even custom myspace profiles (for example) are the BASIC for today's kids. then you get your facebook apps, iphone apps, etc as you move up the food chain to more sophisticated languages.

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#17

Post by Spyckie » Wed, Feb 11, 2009, 6:08 AM UTC

burke wrote: post #11

I learned to program on my TI-83. Over the past few decades, computers have built more and more walls between typical users and programming, whereas on my calculator, it was right there... on a whim, I could, say, make a program to calculate the area of a trapezoid. At the time, if you asked me to do the same thing on a desktop computer, you'd be getting a blank stare. Graphing calculators today are essentially the n…

Yeah, I learned on my TI-89. Ironically, made a DnD character stat generator and a function to calculate the first 6 elements of an infinite series... (calc class was quite boring).

I abused the GOTO statement, though... hey, it wasn't like you were going to care about elegant code design at age 14 on a TI...

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#18

Post by iamwil » Wed, Feb 11, 2009, 6:12 AM UTC

Jebdm wrote: post #8

What about LÖVE? http://love2d.org/ It's really easy to program for; Lua is a language you can pick up without much effort. It's reasonably fast and built upon a few fairly ubiquitous libraries. Game distribution is easy (zip and change the extension to ".love"). Obviously it doesn't come pre-installed anywhere, but it's not hard to get. It would probably take a little work to make it run on game consoles, though, de…

You can just cat the game on to the love executable, and package it together, so that people wouldn't need to download love, according to their docs.

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#19

Post by Spyckie » Wed, Feb 11, 2009, 6:17 AM UTC

I think this is a great idea, and there's a lot of weight behind it. In trying to teach my little cousin how to code one of the biggest blocks I faced was that there was nothing right at his fingertips to play with. I had to spend an hour or so getting him to install stuff, and by that time, he was disinterested.

What got me started was that in 10 minutes, I could have a program running on my TI 89 that did something cool, even if I never looked at it again. We need something like that for this generation that uses this generation's portable technology.

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#20

Post by jwb119 » Wed, Feb 11, 2009, 6:17 AM UTC

ojbyrne wrote: post #4

I get his point, but can't get away from the idea that he's describing the web... and php. New distribution system, larger audience, same idea.

completely agree.. even building a basic html webpage hits a decent amount of his marks (transportable, improves connectivity, etc.)

is it so obvious that it was overlooked?