Re: Programming languages for the very young
From: Anton van Straaten (anton_at_appsolutions.com)
Date: 01/14/04
- Next message: Bruce Stephens: "Re: SOT: GUI design"
- Previous message: Hannah Schroeter: "Re: Strings"
- In reply to: Joe Marshall: "Re: Programming languages for the very young"
- Next in thread: Jonathan Bartlett: "Re: Programming languages for the very young"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 20:51:20 GMT
Joe Marshall wrote:
> "Anton van Straaten" <anton@appsolutions.com> writes:
> > 3. Balancing the above point, it has those sloppy scripting language
> > features that tend to make life easier for beginners who haven't yet
learned
> > to be detail-oriented
>
> I hate those. I think there is an advantage to understanding that
> certain objects have certain behaviors --- you simply cannot add a
> number and a sentence.
I think some of those kinds of features can be helpful, others can be the
opposite. Still, we're talking about teaching young children. We don't
expect that a kid's model of a house to conform to the local municipal
building codes. They use cardboard instead of drywall, etc. I think some
of the things that we tend to assume are essential might need to be let go
of.
> > 5. It has a prototype-based object system.
>
> Minus.
Of course, you don't have to use it. If you want objects at all, you can
build them out of closures, just like in Scheme, or mix the approaches,
using the prototype system to add public methods to an object but using
lexical variables to achieve private state. You can also simulate classes,
if you want them.
Again, I think the friendliness of being able to simply say "obj.foo = ..."
and have it work, without requiring prior setup such as creating a class,
may still be a positive for kids, regardless of what poor software
engineering it might be.
> > 6. It has a good track record with neophytes in the form of web
designers,
>
> I don't want my kids to be code monkeys, I want them to *learn*.
My point was just Javascript has a demonstrated low barrier to entry - that
people with minimal coding aptitude have been able to use it, therefore kids
with no prior experience should also be able to.
> > The biggest disadvantage of Javascript is probably its syntax,
>
> Yes. I would prefer parentheses.
Well, the next step would be to write a small interpreter hosted in the web
browser. You could quite easily build a teaching-oriented Scheme-like
subset on top of Javascript, especially if you didn't care about tail
recursion & continuations and so on. Someone posted here about their
Scheme-in-Javascript implementation a while ago (which might be more than
you need, although I haven't looked at it). You'd still get the integration
with HTML and the "deployability" benefits, but the nature of the language
would be under your control.
Anton
- Next message: Bruce Stephens: "Re: SOT: GUI design"
- Previous message: Hannah Schroeter: "Re: Strings"
- In reply to: Joe Marshall: "Re: Programming languages for the very young"
- Next in thread: Jonathan Bartlett: "Re: Programming languages for the very young"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]
Relevant Pages
|
