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The Little Coder's Predicament

whytheluckystiff.net

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Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#81

Post by eli »

gjm11 wrote: post #63

What _why describes is half the problem. (Maybe a bit more than half.) In the Good Old Days, you could take your Spectrum/Amiga/BBCmicro/C64/whatever, and (1) write a program that (2) did something comparable to the games you could buy. (Less polished, sure, but not a million miles off.) Nowadays, #1 is harder because there's no programming language bundled with the system, because it doesn't drop you into a REPL whe…

Guitar Hero is an incredibly popular game and requires no 3d graphics or full motion video.

I'm pretty sure I could write Guitar Hero in Python. (Oh wait, someone already did! http://fretsonfire.sourceforge.net/)

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#82

Post by misuba »

gaius wrote: post #78
rcoder wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you sort of missed the point of _why's original article, though. He's not lamenting the difficulty for computer-savvy adults to get started programming -- the main thrust of his article is towards our failure to provide an easy-to-use, freely-included sandbox for kids to experiment with programming. How many of the other folks here started out just as described in this article: namely, writing silly little BA…

On any Mac said kid could do: $ python >>> while True: >>> print "JENNY HAS COOTIES!" No installations, no extra privileges, nothing. It just works. _why is tilting at windmills.

No, he's tilting at interfaces. Just because it's possible doesn't make it part of the culture.

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#83

Post by axod »

rcoder wrote: post #76
axod wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, perhaps I should have written a bit more here. The issue is, there is pretty much no barrier at all to programming at the moment. That's why there are so many bad programmers who have just heard there's money to be made. Add to that the fact that identifying bad programmers is sometimes hard, and you have a bad situation. Raise that barrier for entry, and perhaps someone who thinks "Wow there's money to be made i…

I think you sort of missed the point of _why's original article, though. He's not lamenting the difficulty for computer-savvy adults to get started programming -- the main thrust of his article is towards our failure to provide an easy-to-use, freely-included sandbox for kids to experiment with programming. How many of the other folks here started out just as described in this article: namely, writing silly little BA…

Ah ok, I still don't see there being any barrier at all,

I bought my son a ZX Spectrum. You can still buy all the fantastic home computers on ebay etc etc.

Or, there are web based spectrum etc emulators out there where you can just write code and run it.

I'd agree though, it'd be nice to make sure kids can get access to the dev environment that lets them play quickly and easily.

It'd be cool to have something better on netbooks, like the eee. I don't know if there are any good learning programming tools included, but there definitely should be.

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#84

Post by diN0bot »

tsetse-fly wrote: post #32
diN0bot wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, facebook i 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 assemb…

People tinkering with programming don't care about APIs, they don't even know what an API is. Have you seen how much code is required for a Hello World application for the iPhone or how many people there are complaining about Objective-C's syntax? BASIC on TI calculators is very popular among kids because they can figure out how to write a program during their math class. You don't need much reference to write a text…

i understand the advantage of scripts. my sister loves python now because she can munge csv files much faster now (she's a scientist)

api's allow people to do cool things. they're libraries. kids would find programming on a calculator much more tiresome if they had to write the multiplication method first.

i guess tinkering with a calculator is fun, but that seems kind of old school, and also pretty narrow (in my day the kids with the fancy expensive calculators were the ones taking APs and headed towards private colleges).

writing a 10 line python script that does something with twitter or other social networks--tons more fun than math.

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#85

Post by diN0bot »

gaius wrote: post #68
tsetse-fly wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not as accessible as BASIC on a TI calculator, where many kids are introduced to programming. I don't think it's a coincidence that the situation was similar on Commodores/Ataris. Deciding that you need a programming language installed and then picking one and installing it is a very big step. It was a fluke that many of the people posting in this thread discovered programming. They stumbled upon the editor, tap…

Well it is a matter of perspective. If you're a kid and your family has a Mac you just sit down and type python and you're in. Whereas how many 10 year olds even today have graphing calculators? Do kids even use calculators any more or is it all "new maths"?

gaius, you and i are on the same wavelength. the old skool calculators and video games is actually a very narrow approachability (as someone who never had either nor was much interested in either), but is significantly more present on this site. however the new skool method--macs for trendy teens and college folk, or processing for artists, or good old scratch and alice for young kids--is much more present seizure-inducing social network sites, or off the web scene altogether. the anecdotal data here is significantly skewed. the real power of approachability is the variety of people doing technical projects now who otherwise were too intimidated in the past.

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#86

Post by bd »

gjm11 wrote: post #63

What _why describes is half the problem. (Maybe a bit more than half.) In the Good Old Days, you could take your Spectrum/Amiga/BBCmicro/C64/whatever, and (1) write a program that (2) did something comparable to the games you could buy. (Less polished, sure, but not a million miles off.) Nowadays, #1 is harder because there's no programming language bundled with the system, because it doesn't drop you into a REPL whe…

Exactly, lack of motivation is a big deal. Games these days have crazy production values (GTA IV took 3.5 years, 1000 people and $100 million budget).

I know, there are also some very good indie games, but you have to be very creative to be able to compensate for a lack of production values. Not everybody is so multitalented.

One possible solution is to get into programming by modding existing games (instead of starting from scratch). Many cool games have very good scripting engines (for example Unreal, Civilization or Half-Life).

If you mod an existing game, your work is incremental, you can play with all these expensively produced assets. There is an instant gratification when you see some change in the game world made by you. Additionally, your results are immediately understandable to your gaming buddies.

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#87

Post by snprbob86 »

narag wrote: post #57
snprbob86 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We care on the XNA team as well! It's not bundled, but you can develop for your Xbox 360! http://creators.xna.com/ C# Express, Game Studio, and XNA Framework are free for personal and commercial use on Windows. Deploying to your Xbox 360 costs $99/year which includes the rights to sell your games on Xbox Live. The download includes a simple Platformer game "starter kit" (written by yours truly) which is perfect for g…

* Deploying to your Xbox 360 costs $99/year which includes the rights to sell your games on Xbox Live.* What if I don't want to sell anything? Do I still need to pay in order to write programs for a console that I own?

I don't write the policies, nor may I speak in an official capacity about them. One of our MVPs addresses it as best as an outsider can in an FAQ here: http://forums.xna.com/forums/t/12661.aspx

He also describes how students can get one year free through the DreamSpark program: https://www.dreamspark.com/

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#88

Post by pygy »

pygy wrote: post #56
njharman wrote: post #27

The BASIC of today is HTML/CSS/JavaScript. Then there are things such as http://tryruby.hobix.com/ and processing.

Both "Try Ruby" and "The little coder predicament" have been written byt the same person, namely why the lucky stiff or _why. His main programming progress for the last two years has been Hackety Hack, a programming environment for kids, based on Ruby. The first iteration of HH was built on top of Mozilla, but abandonned because of cross platform issues. The next version, due this march, runs on Shoes, a GUI toolkit…

I can't edit my post anymore, sorry for the typos. BTW, s/progress/effort/

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#89

Post by reeses »

ambition wrote: post #60
axod wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So once you've mastered php, you move onto something more powerful. You can do tons in javascript these days also.

Right, but many beginning programmers don't want to start with something boring and move on to the fun stuff. You can't show a CGI form to your friends and have them drool over how cool it is. Instant gratification is key.

It almost has to be at the level of myspace -- look, I can quickly add this picture, or this music, or this text to a page all my friends can see.

Re: The Little Coder's Predicament

#90

Post by gaius »

diN0bot wrote: post #85
gaius wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it is a matter of perspective. If you're a kid and your family has a Mac you just sit down and type python and you're in. Whereas how many 10 year olds even today have graphing calculators? Do kids even use calculators any more or is it all "new maths"?

gaius, you and i are on the same wavelength. the old skool calculators and video games is actually a very narrow approachability (as someone who never had either nor was much interested in either), but is significantly more present on this site. however the new skool method--macs for trendy teens and college folk, or processing for artists, or good old scratch and alice for young kids--is much more present seizure-in…

Interestingly mobile phones used to ship with a tool for programming your own ringtones. My brother used to do it all the time. Nokia at least stopped bundling that when they discovered it was actually possible to sell ringtones.

He's a full-time C++ programmer now :-)

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