Teenage Haskell
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Teenage Haskell
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Re: Teenage Haskell
#2This is awesome! I might have to contribute to codeworld, it seems like a really worthwhile project.
Re: Teenage Haskell
#3My brother (a Haskell programmer) and I (a teacher of high school CS) have talked about this often. He's postulated that teaching Haskell to kids with no programming experience would be an interesting experiment. Their lack of preconceptions regarding programming might make Haskell much easier for them to pick up, than it would for a student with experience in another language.
What would be more interesting however, would be to teach a student Haskell first, and then introduce a language such as Python. Would they think Python was stupid or would they be grateful that all of a sudden they could use a for loop?
Re: Teenage Haskell
#4My brother (a Haskell programmer) and I (a teacher of high school CS) have talked about this often. He's postulated that teaching Haskell to kids with no programming experience would be an interesting experiment. Their lack of preconceptions regarding programming might make Haskell much easier for them to pick up, than it would for a student with experience in another language. What would be more interesting however,…
> Their lack of preconceptions regarding programming might make Haskell much easier for them to pick up, than it would for a student with experience in another language.
Or traumatize them forever away from the field of programming.
> Would they think Python was stupid or would they be grateful that all of a sudden they could use a for loop?
I would love to know the answer to this, regardless of my own biases. But Haskell really does require discipline to use, and the kids would probably appreciate the more lax nature of Python.
Re: Teenage Haskell
#5My brother (a Haskell programmer) and I (a teacher of high school CS) have talked about this often. He's postulated that teaching Haskell to kids with no programming experience would be an interesting experiment. Their lack of preconceptions regarding programming might make Haskell much easier for them to pick up, than it would for a student with experience in another language. What would be more interesting however,…
This has been done with Scheme and works really well. But Haskell really is too complex.
Re: Teenage Haskell
#6My brother (a Haskell programmer) and I (a teacher of high school CS) have talked about this often. He's postulated that teaching Haskell to kids with no programming experience would be an interesting experiment. Their lack of preconceptions regarding programming might make Haskell much easier for them to pick up, than it would for a student with experience in another language. What would be more interesting however,…
> Their lack of preconceptions regarding programming might make Haskell much easier for them to pick up, than it would for a student with experience in another language. Or traumatize them forever away from the field of programming. > Would they think Python was stupid or would they be grateful that all of a sudden they could use a for loop? I would love to know the answer to this, regardless of my own biases. But Ha…
It's an experiment that I'll never run. CS exam requirements are geared towards OO languages. Students have to analyse and write pseudocode using traditional programming constructs.
Re: Teenage Haskell
#7I never tried Haskell, or 'functional programming". To be honest, I don't even know what functional programming is.
Can someone explain how is it different from Python or C (the only two languages I did little coding with)?
Re: Teenage Haskell
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Their lack of preconceptions regarding programming might make Haskell much easier for them to pick up, than it would for a student with experience in another language. Or traumatize them forever away from the field of programming. > Would they think Python was stupid or would they be grateful that all of a sudden they could use a for loop? I would love to know the answer to this, regardless of my own biases. But Ha…
It's an experiment that I'll never run. CS exam requirements are geared towards OO languages. Students have to analyse and write pseudocode using traditional programming constructs.
What are CS exam requirements? Are they standardized? I went through the American system, and never had any of my tests biased to OOP (except of course, a Smalltalk chapter in one PL zoo class).
Object thinking is easier to wrap one's head around than mathematical formal thinking, but that's just because the former uses the brain's innate linguistic hardware (we learn to talk without much effort) while the latter requires training and practice.
Re: Teenage Haskell
#9My brother (a Haskell programmer) and I (a teacher of high school CS) have talked about this often. He's postulated that teaching Haskell to kids with no programming experience would be an interesting experiment. Their lack of preconceptions regarding programming might make Haskell much easier for them to pick up, than it would for a student with experience in another language. What would be more interesting however,…
This has been done with Scheme and works really well. But Haskell really is too complex.
Scheme is quite simple compared to Haskell or even ML. Yet even MIT moved from Scheme to Python.
Re: Teenage Haskell
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an experiment that I'll never run. CS exam requirements are geared towards OO languages. Students have to analyse and write pseudocode using traditional programming constructs.
What are CS exam requirements? Are they standardized? I went through the American system, and never had any of my tests biased to OOP (except of course, a Smalltalk chapter in one PL zoo class). Object thinking is easier to wrap one's head around than mathematical formal thinking, but that's just because the former uses the brain's innate linguistic hardware (we learn to talk without much effort) while the latter req…
Perhaps the commenter is referring to the AP computer science class, which I think is pretty OO based? In my experience at least.