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Ask HN Computer Scientists: could my app make the world a better place?

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Re: Ask HN Computer Scientists: could my app make the world a better place?

#31

Post by jerf »

My feedback is metafeedback: This is not even remotely a new idea. If you can't immediately rattle off the names of three similar systems, well... consider that a sign of how successful this approach has proved in the past.

If you are serious about this, you should dig up those previous systems, and see if you can come up with a reason why your system will fare better. I will concede I am pessimistic that such a property can exist, but who knows if I am correct? But if you really want this to succeed by any measure, you really really ought to do this.

Or decide you totally don't care about success, by any measure you choose, in which case, have fun. But I can't in good conscience just blindly encourage someone when taking on a visual programming language. It's like happily encouraging someone to go ahead, leap off the diving board into the pit of spikes, no problem, everything will be fine. We're taught by our culture to blindly encourage everybody, no matter what, but such encouragement has consequences. We shouldn't ignore those consequences.

If I had to pick the most likely angle of attack for such a system to stand out from the crowd and potentially enable some sort of interaction that might help you escape from what appears to be a total black hole of effort, it would be the input device. The mouse and keyboard have been explored on this front. Perhaps a stylus-based system could do something different and new, or something. (Touch will probably be too imprecise, it virtually drops your resolution and you're going to need more precision, not less.)

Re: Ask HN Computer Scientists: could my app make the world a better place?

#32

Post by owinebarger »

I can't seem to find my copy of the 2009 Scheme Workshop proceedings, but Shriram Krishnamurthi's crew presented some work there that was pretty impressive. They are oriented toward teaching programming to 7-8th graders, before they learn algebra.

They use PLT scheme as the core of their system, but decided to implement it in JS to eliminate difficulties young kids would have installing software, and to simplify sharing of programs for bragging rights (for kids, of course - no adult programmers care about such things).

Re: Ask HN Computer Scientists: could my app make the world a better place?

#33

Post by panic »

Kaizyn wrote: post #25

You're asking the wrong crowd. People who are quite familiar with text-based programming tools just won't get it. You'll get stupid questions like "what does this give me that X doesn't already?" rather than people seeing the potential there for visual programming. As I understand it, the visual programming in LabView and MatLab work quite well. These, I believe, will be your primary points of comparison.

You should look at things like Max/MSP and vvvv as well --- in the graphics/music domain, visual programming languages are often a much better fit.

Re: Ask HN Computer Scientists: could my app make the world a better place?

#34

Post by stcredzero »

alttab wrote: post #30

I think this is an interesting approach. You are visually modelling program FLOW - something that is hard to visualize by just looking at text. I went to Virginia Tech and since the CS department was sucked into the rest of engineering - I ended up taking intro engineering courses (read: a complete waste of time) and they wanted to teach programming to freshman engineers through Alice. Alice, although the early versi…

You are visually modelling program FLOW - something that is hard to visualize by just looking at text.

Visualizing the exchange of messages in object systems is just as hard. I think that that is a big impediment to teaching OO. Perhaps that's a bit more advanced than what this project is after.

Re: Ask HN Computer Scientists: could my app make the world a better place?

#35

Post by stcredzero »

chadkeck wrote: post #13
edw519 wrote: post #8

Which, I hope, will allow more students to get excited about programming, instead of being scared away by compiler errors. I applaud you for your concern and effort, but I wonder about the unintended consequences of this. Do you really want to encourage someone who would be "scared away by compiler errors"? Compiling is easy, deploying is much harder. If someone is scared away by the easy stuff, how will they respond…

I don't think WizBang could ever take away the beginner running into compiler errors, but I feel that the beginner programmer has so many problems to face at once that this situation can be improved. By using WizBang, they can interactively learn about looping and branches without worrying about syntax.

I taught Computer Science 101 in grad school. I think this has a lot of potential.

I wonder if syntax errors could be made friendlier by animating them as visual pieces that don't fit together or that do not stick? I can imagine an editor that always keeps the text syntactically correct (by adding in closing brackets, boilerplate text to be typed over, etc). A visual editor that behaved in the same way would be very useful. Especially if the program code would dynamically update in a parallel window!

I think that people can relate to some widget or puzzle piece fitting or not fitting onto another widget or piece. Certainly, one can relate to this more readily than cryptic messages like "syntax error."

Re: Ask HN Computer Scientists: could my app make the world a better place?

#36

Post by physcab »

jules wrote: post #26
Kaizyn wrote: post #25

You're asking the wrong crowd. People who are quite familiar with text-based programming tools just won't get it. You'll get stupid questions like "what does this give me that X doesn't already?" rather than people seeing the potential there for visual programming. As I understand it, the visual programming in LabView and MatLab work quite well. These, I believe, will be your primary points of comparison.

As someone who is forced to do LabView programming to set up experiments in a class, I disagree. LabView is the most unproductive way to code ever. Doing an `if(x<y)` takes like 100 clicks. The reason LabView is acceptable is that it has a lot of libraries for interfacing with hardware, and libraries for displaying measurements (but if I right click on an array view then "copy data" it copies the number as an image (…

I couldn't agree more. As a programmer, Labview is very frustrating. What takes me an hour to "setup" I could probably code in less than 15 minutes. And its damn slow. And its errors are impossible to troubleshoot.

The only reason why I would attempt to do something in Labview in the first place is because all the hardware manufacturers ship with LabView modules.

Re: Ask HN Computer Scientists: could my app make the world a better place?

#37

Post by Confusion »

stcredzero wrote: post #35
chadkeck wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think WizBang could ever take away the beginner running into compiler errors, but I feel that the beginner programmer has so many problems to face at once that this situation can be improved. By using WizBang, they can interactively learn about looping and branches without worrying about syntax.

I taught Computer Science 101 in grad school. I think this has a lot of potential. I wonder if syntax errors could be made friendlier by animating them as visual pieces that don't fit together or that do not stick? I can imagine an editor that always keeps the text syntactically correct (by adding in closing brackets, boilerplate text to be typed over, etc). A visual editor that behaved in the same way would be very…

I taught Computer Science 101 in grad school. I think this has a lot of potential.

Well, that remark certainly devaluated my opinion of grad schools. I understand not everyone is fit for SICP at 18 (I certainly wasn't), but this is quite on the opposite end.

Re: Ask HN Computer Scientists: could my app make the world a better place?

#38

Post by stcredzero »

Confusion wrote: post #37
stcredzero wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I taught Computer Science 101 in grad school. I think this has a lot of potential. I wonder if syntax errors could be made friendlier by animating them as visual pieces that don't fit together or that do not stick? I can imagine an editor that always keeps the text syntactically correct (by adding in closing brackets, boilerplate text to be typed over, etc). A visual editor that behaved in the same way would be very…

I taught Computer Science 101 in grad school. I think this has a lot of potential. Well, that remark certainly devaluated my opinion of grad schools. I understand not everyone is fit for SICP at 18 (I certainly wasn't), but this is quite on the opposite end.

I was teaching undergrads as a graduate student TA.

Re: Ask HN Computer Scientists: could my app make the world a better place?

#39

Post by Confusion »

stcredzero wrote: post #38
Confusion wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I taught Computer Science 101 in grad school. I think this has a lot of potential. Well, that remark certainly devaluated my opinion of grad schools. I understand not everyone is fit for SICP at 18 (I certainly wasn't), but this is quite on the opposite end.

I was teaching undergrads as a graduate student TA.

Ah, of course. Sorry, somehow I misunderstood what you wrote.
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