Oh. At first glance I thought this was simply a text editor that was actually usable on a phone/tablet. Maybe one day...
Microsoft TouchDevelop
21–30 of 75 posts
Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop
#22I've been doing the hour of code with my 7 yr old daughter. She really enjoys it, so much so that I now get bugged more to "do coding" than to help her with her homework. She's going to love this!
As an aside - To all of you focused on making it easier for the next generation to learn and use these skills:
Thank you so much!
Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop
#23Oh. At first glance I thought this was simply a text editor that was actually usable on a phone/tablet. Maybe one day...
I think you're going to need a hardware solution for that problem. No amount of software will ever overcome the fact that touch screens are not efficient input devices.
Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop
#24Just played around with it a little bit! Super interesting, can certainly see a couple of applicable use cases! The way the tutorials are setup will actually be handy for education, certainly if it would be possible to create your own tutorial. Edit: Typo
>The way the tutorials are setup will actually be handy for education, certainly if it would be possible to create your own tutorial.
WOW, that's a good idea. The amount of work (and other resources) that goes in to creating a high quality online tutorial really is much more than is required to teach a concept well. Making tutorial-making easy would be a HUGE win.
Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop
#25Oh. At first glance I thought this was simply a text editor that was actually usable on a phone/tablet. Maybe one day...
I think you're going to need a hardware solution for that problem. No amount of software will ever overcome the fact that touch screens are not efficient input devices.
Touch screens are much more efficient that keyboard and mice for some types of input (not for others: e.g. typing). Not only that, the intuitiveness of an obvious "hands-on" touch-screen interface allows toddlers to learn to use it before they even learn to speak (I've seen it first hand, as I guess many others must have). I believe there are forms of programming that can be done better with a touch-based interface. It's just that programming languages and tools have to evolve until we get there. When we get there, I believe it will mostly obliterate the current approaches to programming, the same way we're not entering machine code manually through a front-mounted panel with LEDs, or writing assembly language. Of course some exceptions always remain.
Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're going to need a hardware solution for that problem. No amount of software will ever overcome the fact that touch screens are not efficient input devices.
Touch screens are much more efficient that keyboard and mice for some types of input (not for others: e.g. typing). Not only that, the intuitiveness of an obvious "hands-on" touch-screen interface allows toddlers to learn to use it before they even learn to speak (I've seen it first hand, as I guess many others must have). I believe there are forms of programming that can be done better with a touch-based interface.…
Don't you think having your hands in front of the screen is inherently problematic? It's hard to image where that would enhance efficiency.
Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop
#27Little buggy on desktop chrome, but may that is not the intended browser? http://i.imgur.com/QVzTlqD.png
Chrome is definitely in Microsoft intended browser. Most of the dev are using Chrome at Redmond while developing.
Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop
#28I really enjoy the beginner mode, much more fun than using vi :)
Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're going to need a hardware solution for that problem. No amount of software will ever overcome the fact that touch screens are not efficient input devices.
Touch screens are much more efficient that keyboard and mice for some types of input (not for others: e.g. typing). Not only that, the intuitiveness of an obvious "hands-on" touch-screen interface allows toddlers to learn to use it before they even learn to speak (I've seen it first hand, as I guess many others must have). I believe there are forms of programming that can be done better with a touch-based interface.…
No way. Nobody is going to take my keyboard away and have me poking one finger around on a smudgy screen, and still call it programming. So many ways that is worse. Pipe dream.
Re: Microsoft TouchDevelop
#30When I see tools like this, that allow children and adults to make things, using the same platform, I can only think Microsoft is it literally investing in the future. It's so easy to get wrapped up in what a tech company can produce now, or in a year that often times people forget about creating awesome tools. Tools last a lot longer than platforms or devices. While Minecraft is a slightly different example, its cor…
Seems like this was made by Microsoft Research. I'd argue Microsoft Research's very existence shows Microsoft is heavily invested in the future, more so than any other tech company as far as I know. Maybe besides IBM I dont know any other company that still funds research which isn't expected to have some relationship to the business side of things.
Microsoft Research is strongly expected to have an impact on the business side of things. It just so happens that Microsoft is willing to incubate projects like Midori* that have long runways (decade+) and may completely fail. The hope is that some new emerging tech long plays will become huge business boons (Cortana, Kinect, ..). There's lots of investment in NLP, vision, and OS research over at MSR.
As far as other tech companies with large R&D budgets, look at Google. However, Google's R&D investment areas are different than MSFT's (apparently they don't do OS research): http://money.cnn.com/2013/11/20/technology/mobile/apple-rd-s...