I miss _why ...
Hackety Hack, like all of _why's projects, got adopted by someone else after his departure: http://github.com/steveklabnik/hacketyhack/
Alas, it doesn't seem to be getting much activity.
Why kids don't program
51–60 of 96 posts
Re: Why kids don't program
#52It's actually fairly easy to do what he wants today. ipython -pylab [...boilerplate...] In [1]: n = arange(255) In [2]: plot(n, 88+80*sin(n*pi/128)) http://imgur.com/oSd62.png As for the "imaginary diffusion equation" (I assume he means the Schrodinger equation), here is a simple program which solves it on the torus: from pylab import * from numpy.fft import * def freeSchrodingerSolver(input, dx, dt): np = input.shap…
I just tried opening up terminal on my MacBook Pro, typing in what you wrote and nothing happened.
Re: Why kids don't program
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, actually, sudo apt-get ipython sudo apt-get install ipython ipython -pylab sudo apt-get install pylab sudo synaptic ( And then the program works. Actually, thanks for that, I didn't know about that stuff, and it looks really useful. If I can figure out how to get the drawings to move then it will do what I want. (to visualize the action of unitary matrices on Hilbert spaces) But my point was that in 1982, my no…
Regarding a minimal setup python environment, which requires nothing more than a newbie parent to download, PythonTurtle or Squeak is probably what you want. I think the issue is mainly just lack of knowledge that truly newbie friendly environments exist. Perhaps the solution is simply better advertising of squeak, or perhaps having it come preinstalled (as OLPC did)? Incidentally, the animation info you seek (admitt…
Thank you so much for that and for your previous post. Exactly what I wanted.
Re: Why kids don't program
#54I remember growing up I was playing on the Internet and found a 10 chapter book online for QBASIC. I printed it out and had it scattered all over the floor, and in no time at all I was writing code that actually did things. I had never written code before and I was in elementary school (9 or 10?). Eventually this led to html, javascript, php, VB, C#, etc. Dad wasn't real thrilled when he realized I used all of the pr…
Dosbox is a great emulator and works in OSX
Re: Why kids don't program
#55For me it was exactly the opposite. I started learning programming at 13 reading the zx spectrum manual chapter after chapter until I came to sin and cos which I did not know. My parents hadn't studied, so they could not tell me. Instead of just skipping that chapter, I gave up programming. Much later I studied economics. Working as an economist I discovered the fun of programming with visual basic, and then decided…
I took a somewhat similar route. My math education after grade school was poor. I had disinterested teachers with the exception of one, under whom I advanced quickly and almost enabled me to catch up with my peers, however under the next math instructor and those that followed I again struggled and barely scraped by, often by repeating semesters.
Without the math requisites, I was only able to take introductory programming courses in High School. Those teachers recognized my interest and feed me more advanced material while I was with them, but when I had taken the only classes available without those math prerequisites, we parted ways.
After graduating H.S. I took to writing excessively intricate batch scripts on my family's XT, and later while working on a help desk I checked out this new "HTML" and "JavaScript" stuff by way of WebMonkey tutorials and free hosting on a new service called GeoCities.
Years later, with ASP/VBscript, PHP, and bash experience all from after-hours activities I transitions from systems support and administration to programming as my career, after which my experience and expertise has mushroomed.
I couldn't have come all this way without the resources of the Web to back me up.
Re: Why kids don't program
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see that it is that much harder now. Boot your mac, open a terminal, type python, and start programming. Does it take one more step? Maybe, but it is a joke to say that is somehow more difficult.
Show me a tutorial on Python graphics on OS X that doesn't require installing an external library or learning about a really complicated graphics framework (Quartz 2D) and I'll believe what you just wrote. Apple basic graphics was one of two commands: GR or HGR
Your requirement that there be no external libraries is unfair. It's perfectly valid for a tutorial to start with "Download this package and run the installer," which is easier than any actual programming the reader might do.
There are plenty of great tutorials for PyGame and pyglet. The main issue is that you have to open a terminal.
If you look past Python, Scratch provides a very low barrier to entry for this sort of thing.
Re: Why kids don't program
#57There are so many more options than when he was writing BASIC programs on a ZX Spectrum. Choose something straightforward and stick with it. Python is about as simple as it gets. PLT Scheme is also a great option, it has a fully self-contained environment that includes much better graphics options than BASIC did, and is well-documented. There are lots of others - this post has some good discussion on a similar topic:…
Having more options means you have to figure out what choose. That doesn't make it easier, that makes it's harder. It's also important that there be a lot of reference materials which would be easy for a kid to teach him/herself with. For example: http://www.scribd.com/doc/200861/A-Touch-of-Applesoft-BASIC-... This was the book I read when I was 10 years old. It was also easy to find BASIC code at the school library…
How many general computer magazines still exist?
The web has made printing code redundant. Why type it in when you can cut and paste?
Re: Why kids don't program
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Teach children to draw on a canvas in javascript. I've thought a few times that this is the modern equivalent of the immediate feedback "plot via BASIC". It's even better, given the fact that JS is a decent language and the results are more easily shareable with your friends.
Are there decent tools to debug and check JS for you, so that you don't have to rely on the browser built-in support (which is incredibly forgiving but also doesn't tell you what is going on)? A massive advantage of BASIC was that it would tell you it was wrong as soon as you typed something with a syntax error in it, and it put a big flashing "?" (or similar) right there until you fixed it. Can JS be made to do that…
Editor+syntax highlighting for static analysis, and firefox+firebug for runtime errors?
Re: Why kids don't program
#59For me it was exactly the opposite. I started learning programming at 13 reading the zx spectrum manual chapter after chapter until I came to sin and cos which I did not know. My parents hadn't studied, so they could not tell me. Instead of just skipping that chapter, I gave up programming. Much later I studied economics. Working as an economist I discovered the fun of programming with visual basic, and then decided…
That makes me feel really sad. My epiphany was your iron curtain coming down. I can see how. In fact I had the same reaction initially (and my parents are graduates, but they don't know the first thing about maths, so they were no help to me either). I have no idea why I wrote the program to plot a circle that made it obvious what sin and cos were. In fact I think I might have misremembered my own story. I had a ZX81…
Oh don't be sad. I'm overdramatizing, there's really no way to be sure that I would have continued programming if I had got past that hurdle. Or I might even not have enjoyed it. Maybe I needed to see the ugliness of economics very closely before I could really appreciate the beauty of programming.
Luckily the internet bubble came along just at the right moment, made it really easy to become a programmer on the job and now everything is fine.
Re: Why kids don't program
#60This type of math-programming-graphics-game mind soup resonates with me very well.
I did mine on a TI-83 calculator, went to visual basic, and then C++/DirectX. Once I grasped sin/cos/tan, I created Microcosm (missle command, angles, rotation as my primary game mechanic due to my fascination of the power of trig, http://arcade.connersc.com).
I feel the same way. You put it in words clearly. :)