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Silent Teacher – A game to learn how to code

silentteacher.toxicode.fr

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Re: Silent Teacher – A game to learn how to code

#51

Post by Tad_Ghostly »

plancien wrote: post #49

Hi everyone, I'm the guy behind Silent Teacher. I just had the surprise to see my work on HN, in fact a colleague of mine published it without me knowing, I didn't have the chance to really explain the goal. This is a side project, and the goal is not to teach how to code. I agree with several comments here, it's sometime confusing, it's short and minimalistic. The real goal is far less ambitious. I just wanted peopl…

Do you have any demos or profiles of your other educational projects? I'm working on project that uses a pedagogy similar to the Silent Teacher, I'm always curious to see what other people are doing in that area.

Re: Silent Teacher – A game to learn how to code

#52

Post by notduncansmith »

dubcanada wrote: post #19

I don't mean to be mean but some of these answers depend on what language you use. For example var a = '3'; var b = '4'; a + b; Depending on the language may give you 7 or maybe give you 34.

I hope that wrapping one of those values in quotes was a mistake, because I very much do not want to work in a language where concatenating two strings which happen to contain integers returns the sum of those integers.

Re: Silent Teacher – A game to learn how to code

#53

Post by notduncansmith »

_pmf_ wrote: post #35
matchu wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's an example of a language that, when adding two strings/chars, parses them as integers first?

> What's an example of a language that, when adding two strings/chars, parses them as integers first? The cancerous piece of shit we know as Javascript.

As 'croddin pointed out, this is flat-out wrong - and that attitude is hardly conducive to a constructive discussion.

Re: Silent Teacher – A game to learn how to code

#54

Post by notduncansmith »

gabemart wrote: post #36

I hate being negative, but I have to say that I really don't think this an effective way to learn how to code for someone without some programming knowledge to begin with. I just watched someone with no programming experience whatsoever try the problems. She's smart and well educated. The basic arithmetic is (obviously) fine. Basic variable assignment is fine, although the 'var' keyword doesn't really serve a purpose…

I just had my wife go through it, and she had similar sticking points. She seemed to grok most of it, with some small explanations of syntax along the way (=== as equality vs = as assignment, [a, b, c] is a list of things, etc).

I think that the value of this tool is to help non-programmers discover that code isn't scary, and that it's made of simple things that regular humans can understand. The key would be to have a developer beside them to (briefly) explain things that look utterly foreign or step in with some guidance if things get frustrating.

Overall, in my opinion it's a fantastic "gentle introduction to programming". It was a real confidence-builder for my wife, and she's agreed to go through tryruby.org with me tomorrow. Mission accomplished, IMO.

Re: Silent Teacher – A game to learn how to code

#55

Post by fpaboim »

plancien wrote: post #49

Hi everyone, I'm the guy behind Silent Teacher. I just had the surprise to see my work on HN, in fact a colleague of mine published it without me knowing, I didn't have the chance to really explain the goal. This is a side project, and the goal is not to teach how to code. I agree with several comments here, it's sometime confusing, it's short and minimalistic. The real goal is far less ambitious. I just wanted peopl…

The string concatenation was well explained :). And the site looks good, good job!

Re: Silent Teacher – A game to learn how to code

#56

Post by plancien »

Tad_Ghostly wrote: post #51
plancien wrote: post #49

Hi everyone, I'm the guy behind Silent Teacher. I just had the surprise to see my work on HN, in fact a colleague of mine published it without me knowing, I didn't have the chance to really explain the goal. This is a side project, and the goal is not to teach how to code. I agree with several comments here, it's sometime confusing, it's short and minimalistic. The real goal is far less ambitious. I just wanted peopl…

Do you have any demos or profiles of your other educational projects? I'm working on project that uses a pedagogy similar to the Silent Teacher, I'm always curious to see what other people are doing in that area.

No, but there are works in progress and we hope to release some very soon. If you want to take part in beta tests, you can leave your email there on the two "coming soon" projects here : http://www.toxicode.fr/learn
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