As someone who has been spending time this year learning to code, I just wanted to say this essay is EXACTLY what I have been yearning for. Thanks for putting this together.
Bret Victor: Learnable Programming
101–110 of 193 posts
Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming
#102> A live-coding Processing environment addresses neither of these goals. JavaScript and Processing are poorly-designed languages that support weak ways of thinking, and ignore decades of learning about learning. And live coding, as a standalone feature, is worthless.
Woah come on Bret, we're getting there give them a break! I distinctly remember that this was the work of a couple of interns with the help of Resig.
A couple of things - I still don't have live coding for the vast majority of my programming environments - so that little text box is about 10x better than the vim/eclipse + run loop with print statements that most of us use.
Second javascript is brilliant - lazy ways of thinking are brilliant - you will not believe how motivating it is to just get shit on the screen as a learner. I myself have wasted inordinate amounts of time setting up compilers, interpreters, environments, graphics/audio etc. when all I want to do is bloody program the thing in my head. Who cares where the files are? Who cares where the images are? The environment should be designed to get out of my way - not the other way around.
Most importantly of all - javascript is the most forgiving language I have ever seen - and this is gold. There's a reason Google started with python, Twitter with rails, and Facebook started with PHP - no one gives a shit about "strict thinking" or "brutal languages" - that stuff should come way - way later when you actually need it.
Strict languages for learners are a case of premature optimisation. My little brother absolutely loves the new Khan Academy coding environment/system because of the fact that it isn't strict.
Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming
#103Couple random thoughts: 1. Is Bret Victor now the Linus of cutting-edge programming environments? 2. I don't have enough experience with Light Table or the Khan Academy environment to know whether Khan is just a first step on the way to something like Bret's vision, or more of a diversion. I was fairly impressed with the Khan env in my limited time with it. 3. I HATE telling people they shouldn't speak their mind and…
> 1. Is Bret Victor now the Linus of cutting-edge programming environments? Linus actually implements his solutions to things that he rants about, and releases his code, so that analogy isn't quite right. Bret gives us nice big-picture ideas and leaves the implementation for others. I think many of the specific ideas mentioned by Bret will quickly fall apart when trying to actually implement something non-trivial. Bu…
Or you could check out his site and notice "tangle - explorable explanations made easy", which is a Javascript library that implements the very sorts of interactions he's talking about.
Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming
#104If such an environment ever existed, it would be amazing.
But I can't think of any way that such an environment could exist without having to program a new environment for every problem. Not from scratch, of course, a lot of core concepts could be abstracted out, but even with all the abstractions in place, and all the libraries presenting a standard interface, I'd imagine few thousand lines for the features described just for the environment which is limited to 2d graphics.
You could need a new "plugin" for the environment for every different kind of problem. You would run into two problems: first, how could these be composed in a usable way, you don't usually solve problems that are just about 2d graphics or just about parsing text, you're working with 4 or 5 of these at once; second, the whole idea behind this is to enhance imagination, but doesn't the dependence on existing tooling to help you solve a specific set of problems limit you not by the extent of your imagination, but by the power of your tools? Currently our imaginations aren't getting much help, but they're our only limit (that and the speed of the computer of course).
I'd rather the only real limit to what I can design be myself, not my tools.
Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming
#105There's already two comments here about being "harsh" or "ungracious" towards Khan Academy which is ridiculous. The usual HN article that contains criticisms is usually limited to that. Some rant that took 10 minutes to write and contains nothing constructive. Bret Victor put an insane amount of time into this (I can only assume) and is truly advancing mindsets about programming tools and learning. We should all be t…
I agree, and would add that Brett Victor is pointing out what he perceives to be valid flaws with the method Khan Academny uses to teach programming (live coding environments, javascript, and processing languages, which other teaching products happen to use as well). He is not criticizing Khan Academy as a whole directly, as the quality or lack thereof of Khan Academy itself is never brought into question or even dis…
Totally. People are too quick to jump on the "he's ranting" band wagon.
Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming
#106"We change programming. We turn it into something that's understandable by people."
No, actually we don't. This has been attempted recursively since the 70's. It's not a credible or desirable goal. Programming is complex by nature. All powerfully flexible systems are. Being capable of (much less excelling at) mentally modelling complex abstract systems is not a trait that "normal" people posses. This is neither bad, nor wrong. It simply is. Ignoring this is pure folly.
Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming
#107I really enjoyed Bret's article. I don't necessarily agree with all of it but the main argument is quite sound. Bret writes: "People understand what they can see." which is true for some people but not true for all people. I've got one daughter who is very verbal, one very visual. They learn differently. This in a minor nit though, his exploration of the 'code' / 'example' model is good. I particularly liked the comm…
Ah, but doesn't this have the same problems all NLP systems have? It gives illusion of flexibility that gets shattered every time user allows himself to believe in it. What if I prefer to write them in different order? Or if some version of named parameters is in use, what if I like some other synonym for height? Strict syntax is a good thing as long as it is also brittle.
Now, an IDE that generates a training text like that on the fly and allows you to fill in the values without actually storing the training text would be nice. Something like intellisence popups, but inline and expanded.
Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming
#108although i have cursorily skimmed the article, it seems to be based partly on his excellent talk "inventing on principle", available here: http://vimeo.com/36579366.
Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming
#109Alan Perlis wrote, "To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program." This view is a mistake, and it is this widespread and virulent mistake that keeps programming a difficult and obscure art. A person is not a machine, and should not be forced to think like one.
This is nothing but prejudice, and, ironically, it is contrary to how we work as human beings. In any field, we celebrate sympathy between an expert and the matter of his or her expertise. If we say that a pianist "becomes" the piano; we do not regret the dehumanization of the pianist. If we say that a rider has learned to "think like" a horse, we do not believe the rider has become less intelligent thereby. If we say a fireman thinks like a fire, it's a compliment, not a statement that his mind can be modeled by simple physical laws. Sympathy is an expansion of one's understanding, not a reduction. For example, the wonderfully named "Mechanical Sympathy" is a blog that will improve your grasp of the connection between performance and hardware architecture without dehumanizing you one bit. Heck, here's a guy who says he has to "think like a maggot," and he doesn't seem ashamed or degraded in the least: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-17700116
Is it reasonable to ask a programmer to think like a machine? Of course. We find it natural and admirable for people working with pianos, horses, fires, or maggots to identify themselves with the subject of their expertise, and there's no reason why we should make an exception for computers. It's true that when it comes to usability, for a long time we've known we have to take very strong negative emotions into account. It isn't an overstatement to say that some people loath and fear computers. However, as a general principle, it seems to me that any educational philosophy grounded in the assumption that the learners find the subject uniquely distasteful or unworthy is unlikely to be effective. If someone learning programming finds computers so inherently distasteful that they are put off by the idea of achieving a more intimate sympathy with them, then the long-term plan should be to overcome their aversion, not to try to teach them to understand and control something they are fundamentally alienated from. Human beings just don't work that way. Alienation and understanding don't mix.
Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm sorry Bret, but Alan is right. You do need to be able to think like a machine. I would like to bring in another Alan Perlis quote: "You cannot move from the informal to the formal by formal means." Programming is the art of formalizing things to a point where they are executable. Executable by what is the point of contention here. I think you are saying (and I somewhat agree) that ultimately your programs and i…
I dont think it needs to be a real machine in the sense of a physical one, just in the sense of an execution environment. What worries me about Bret's tools is that it looks like they make it easier for someone to produce something without knowing why . When you learn maths at school, you're normally taught to show your working - getting the answer isn't enough, you need to understand the process. Having so many slid…
I really don't see that at all in what he's showed. Everything there is about helping people understand how and why the program is working.