Re: Programming languages for the very young

From: Yoyoma_2 (Yoyoma_2_at_[at-)
Date: 01/27/04 

Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 06:05:55 GMT

When i think we were all young we might remember doing LOGO or Basic on
our apple IIe's in second grade. I know i do.

A small extension to basic is Visual Basic. It is a very simple
language but it will allow young poeple to develop meaningfull windows
application easily.

Its also a "usefull" language in the sense that it is used somewhat in
the development world.

So my vote is something like LOGO for the very young (maby until like
grade 3 or 4) then VB until 11th grade then dwell in c++ or java since
they have the cognitive abilities to do the complex desings needed for
those languages.

Anyway i'me not a psycologist but its just for my own experience growing
up in the internet age.

Julian V. Noble wrote:
> m-coughlin wrote:
>
>>"Mark A. Washburn" wrote:
>>
>>>Joe Marshall <prunesquallor@comcast.net> wrote in message
>>><snip>
>>>
>>>>Certainly there are many computer whizzes that could use a
>>>>little help with their English, but I think there are as many
>>>>English majors who would benefit from a computer science
>>>>course (*not* a computer literacy course, but a real
>>>>programming course). Writing programs is a great way to
>>>>learn critical thinking.
>>>
>>>As critical thinking is for writing good programs.
>>>
>>>Currently my academic recommendation for
>>>"Introduction to Programming" focuses on a
>>>single language ... Forth ...; And continues thru
>>>advanced programming. With Forth as a starting focus
>>>for learning programming, many directions for opportunities
>>>in /critical thinking/ are opened simultaneously;
>>>from the lowest levels of assembler and assembly language
>>>programming thru the highest levels of problem solving,
>>>in general, and, more specifically, including structured
>>>programming, functional programming, object oriented design
>>>and language compiler design ( ANSI Forth is a nearly ideal
>>>prototyping tool for language design ).
>>
>>[snip]
>>
>> There are many good reasons for using Forth. There is one
>>overwhelming reason for not using it, especially for new or very
>>young computer students. There is little useful training
>>material. There is much information on Forth for computer
>>hackers -- those people who know a lot about computers already,
>>can reverse engineer code and remember cryptic abbreviations.
>>Experts in other languages, such as Scheme, Java, Logo, and even
>>C and C++, go out of their way to write beginners books and
>>these can be found easily. The only such books on Forth have to
>>be ordered online. This was not always the case. Twenty years
>>ago you could go into a bookstore and find the best book on
>>programming was "Starting Forth" by Leo Brodie. Nowadays Forth
>>programmers regret the unavailability of such a book on Forth,
>>but they do not recognize this as the absolute disaster it is.
>>
>> Forth is a powerful language that enables individuals to
>>write and publish their own versions of program development
>>systems. But these are almost always beta versions needing
>>documentation. No Forth programmer has ever made a package that
>>could be used in the lower grades to teach children or even (a
>>much harder job) to teach elementary school teachers something
>>about programming. It could be done, but there is no Forth
>>programmer who seems to be interested. It would require a
>>complete change of emphasis, from writing creative code for
>>machines to writing clear literature for human beings.
>>
>>--
>>Michael Coughlin m-coughlin@comcast.net Cambridge, MA USA
>
>
> Well, Mike, there is a problem here, of the chicken/egg variety.
> Because major corporations push C, C++, C#, Java, etc. there are
> publishers willing to risk publishing introductory texts for
> those languages (as well as others favored by the academic community,
> such as Python, Perl, et al.).
>
> But Prentice-Hall did not keep "Starting Forth" or "Thinking Forth"
> in print, despite the demonstrated excellence of both books as well
> as pretty good sales.
>
> Kelly & Spies's book, "Forth: a text and reference" was also around
> for a while, but CS departments showed little interest in giving
> courses in Forth. At this U., we had some engineering courses that
> referenced Forth, a course in instrumentation taught by Kelly (for
> a while), and a course in numerical methods where I used Forth in
> front of my classes (admittedly with a FORTRAN-ish front end) so
> I could compose programs, debug them, and run them, before the stu-
> dents' very eyes. I could not insist that they do their HW in Forth,
> however, since it wasn't taught as a language. In fact I had to learn
> some C so I could understand and grade their HW. Only a few of the
> many students who took PHYS 551 (and saw me do amazing things in
> front of the class in real time) took the time to try Forth. The
> attitude of the CS department was, shall we say, not conducive
> to motivating the average student to learn such an off-beat language.
>
> MIT is a wonderful place--it must be to offer a course in Structure
> and Interpretation of Computer Programs, using the book by Abelson &
> Sussman, with Scheme as the illustration language. (I am pleased to
> see that my alma mater, Caltech, offers a similar course.) Most CS
> intro courses in the US employ C or C++, although some use Java and a
> few diehards still feature Pascal. AFIK none use Basic, and even
> fewer use Forth.
>
> So how is a publisher to find a market for intro course materials
> in Forth? Perhaps if some organization pushed it a bit ...
>
> Actually, the tutorials available on the Web, including (blush)
> my own, are perfectly adequate to teach an intro course. And
> they are free. What one lacks is a coherent set of exercises
> and problems. Someone --perhaps someone who wants to see a course
> taught-- should write a set of exercises. I leave the task of doing
> so as an, ahem, exercise. ;-)
>

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