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Bret Victor: Learnable Programming

worrydream.com

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Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming

#21

Post by DigitalJack »

twelvechairs wrote: post #14

Its a smartly written piece, but to me this just scratches the surface. A couple of issues: 1. If you are making the conceptual jump from 'text' to 'dynamically annotated text', why not go a step further and just let people draw a rectangle with visual tools entirely (like in Illustrator,Inkscape,etc.) and forget the textual representation? 2. The real difficulty comes with representing things as they may arise throu…

1)Because that is not learning programming, which is entirely what this essay is about. 1.b) Learning programming is about learning to reason about problems. Not about learning to use different tools.

2) I think I agree that dynamic programs would be more challenging to do this with. On the flip side, this demonstration is so far beyond my reasoning that it doesn't mean much to me. It's all stunning.

Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming

#22

Post by DigitalJack »

modeless wrote: post #20

As much as I love Bret Victor's ideas, I feel this is a bit harsh on Khan Academy. There's nothing wrong with criticism, but it shouldn't be your only kind of feedback. Even if Khan Academy did nothing right (which I think is clearly false) they should at least deserve praise for attacking the problem at all, when so many people are content to ignore it. If you're trying to lead a revolution in programming, witholdin…

I can see how it can be read as harsh.

What I see is someone who cares very deeply about the message he is trying to get out. He cares so much that when someone falls short while citing his work as inspiration, he feels it's doing the world a disservice not to address the short comings.

Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming

#23

Post by winter_blue »

As far as labeling function arguments, I've always used an IDE that supports some kind-of feature that gives me exactly that. In Eclipse, Java (JDT), C/C++ (CDT), Python (PyDev), Go (Goclipse) -- all support the little pop-up box that appears when you type the name of a function and shows docs related to that function. This feature is so crucial, I couldn't use a development environment without it.

Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming

#24

Post by bretthopper »

There'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 thankful that he put this much effort into a "criticism" piece.

Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming

#25

Post by phleet »

modeless wrote: post #20

As much as I love Bret Victor's ideas, I feel this is a bit harsh on Khan Academy. There's nothing wrong with criticism, but it shouldn't be your only kind of feedback. Even if Khan Academy did nothing right (which I think is clearly false) they should at least deserve praise for attacking the problem at all, when so many people are content to ignore it. If you're trying to lead a revolution in programming, witholdin…

Speaking as one of the interns that worked on the project, I don't really feel that this was too harsh.

Had he focused on all the things that were wrong with it and torn it to pieces, I would be inclined to agree, but he's provided a number of very specific ways in which the environment could be improved.

Some of these ideas were considered and not implemented for practical reasons, others were left out due to time constraints, and some we honestly just didn't think of.

On the particular note of practicality, we were trying to make the best thing we could make exist now. I hope that Khan Academy Computer Science in its current state looks laughable in a few years - both compared to what it becomes and compared to what other people have built.

Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming

#26

Post by PeterisP »

Very powerful and insightful article. I'm not sure if I agree with everything, but it's very inspiring nonetheless and I hope that such a learning environment will be a reality by the time my kids are old enough to think about programming.

Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming

#27

Post by judofyr »

DigitalJack wrote: post #21
twelvechairs wrote: post #14

Its a smartly written piece, but to me this just scratches the surface. A couple of issues: 1. If you are making the conceptual jump from 'text' to 'dynamically annotated text', why not go a step further and just let people draw a rectangle with visual tools entirely (like in Illustrator,Inkscape,etc.) and forget the textual representation? 2. The real difficulty comes with representing things as they may arise throu…

1)Because that is not learning programming, which is entirely what this essay is about. 1.b) Learning programming is about learning to reason about problems. Not about learning to use different tools. 2) I think I agree that dynamic programs would be more challenging to do this with. On the flip side, this demonstration is so far beyond my reasoning that it doesn't mean much to me. It's all stunning.

1: That is not entirely what he's saying though:

A frequent question about the sort of techniques presented here is, "How does this scale to real-world programming?" This is somewhat like asking how the internal combustion engine will benefit horses. The question assumes the wrong kind of change.

Here is a more useful attitude: Programming has to work like this. Programmers must be able to read the vocabulary, follow the flow, and see the state. Programmers have to create by reacting and create by abstracting. Assume that these are requirements. Given these requirements, how do we redesign programming?

Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming

#28

Post by winter_blue »

winter_blue wrote: post #23

As far as labeling function arguments, I've always used an IDE that supports some kind-of feature that gives me exactly that. In Eclipse, Java (JDT), C/C++ (CDT), Python (PyDev), Go (Goclipse) -- all support the little pop-up box that appears when you type the name of a function and shows docs related to that function. This feature is so crucial, I couldn't use a development environment without it.

He mentions the context being needed for a function call, more than once -- it makes me wonder, doesn't anyone use IDEs? (I don't know vim/emacs are so popular when they provide no context - much more crucial to me than editing power. There's a plug-in for vim that uses ctags to provide context, I hear, but I don't know of many that use it :/)

Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming

#29

Post by croddin »

twelvechairs wrote: post #14

Its a smartly written piece, but to me this just scratches the surface. A couple of issues: 1. If you are making the conceptual jump from 'text' to 'dynamically annotated text', why not go a step further and just let people draw a rectangle with visual tools entirely (like in Illustrator,Inkscape,etc.) and forget the textual representation? 2. The real difficulty comes with representing things as they may arise throu…

1)He shows an example of this. The last one in http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/#react

2)I think the examples with the various timelines, wrapping code in functions or for loops, and replacing constants with variables came a long way in that direction

Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming

#30

Post by gfodor »

There is nothing new here. Before you downvote, this is actually a huge complement to Bret. As he's said before he is inventing on principle not inventing for you to download and install his latest hack. His principles have been consistent (and, imho, right), and this is another view into them. But, if this opened up some huge new insight for you then you haven't been paying close enough attention.

He's always been right and I hope he continues to have patience while he continues his conversation with the world as the world misunderstands his ideas. Unfortunately many people are going to latch on to the examples in his demo movies, and the important parts of the essay will fly over their heads. (The most important part of this essay being, of course, to read Mindstorms.)

All of his creative output points to the same core message: programming today is broken because it is not designed. His various essays, talks, and so on are just alternative "projections" of this thesis. This is a sign of clear thinking.

He's given us all the tools we need to solve this problem. These tools are the mental framework he lays out, not the specific concrete flavor he demoed in his latest talk or essay.

The hard part is not building IDEs or visualizations, it's having the guts to throw everything out and start over again, knowing it's going to be a mess for a long time and it will take years before things start to make sense again. It's convincing yourself that most of what you know is useless and that many of your assumptions are wrong.

Why do that when you can just download the latest whiz bang framework and start hacking shit together taking advantage of the life-long skill you've acquired at firing bullets with a blindfold on?

It's scary to be a newborn again, especially when you're in a place where few have been before (and those that have, are largely not around anymore.)

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