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The Little Coder's Predicament
An anonymous reader writes "There's an interesting article
on Advogato about the world of computing that kids today find themselves in compared to the world that kids in the 80's found themselves in. Learning to program in the 80's was simpler because the machines were more limited, and generally came with BASIC. Now we have Windows, which typically comes with no built-in programming language. What can be done to improve the situation?"
That ought to do the trick. Pick some easy to install distro, does loadlin still work on WIndows, well, make a boot floppy if need be.
Infuriate left and right
Second, once they've got the basics down, get them something a bit more practical. Cygwin is free, and comes with gcc/gc++ and friends. Or even break down and spend a few bucks on Visual Basic (or, if they're really bright, a second hard drive with Linux/*BSD/whatever, so they can pick up GTK+ or QT or whichever widget set is trendy these days).
Most of the advogato article's suggestions are at best silly. I think he's promoting the return of LOGO, or whatever that language was where you did everything with a "turtle". Except that e apparently expects Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and everyone else to agree on a single standard, which is at best laughable. None of those game consoles even come with a keyboard any more, and I don't think you can even get keyboards for the GameCube...
Free... Multiple free programming languages, includng BASIC... GUI Editors and debuggers... Copious documentation... Responsive community...
Seems like a no-brainer to me.
Now we have Windows, which typically comes with no built-in programming language
;)
Windows comes with VBScript built-in!
er..can I really call it a programming language?
Let's face it, if you want to develop software, Unix or Linux is a great way to go. The price is right, the technology is current, the compilers are included, and multiple programming languages from lowest to highest level are included/available.
So if you want your child to have the experience of becoming a techie, it behooves you to have at least one workstation around that can at LEAST dual-boot into a *ix environment, IMHO.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
When I started programming, I was 8 years old, and worked with what I had available. I made simple GW-BASIC programs and have moved on from there. Maybe OS's should think about the next generation of devlopers and include some sort of learning language to get the kids hooked when they are young. At least they could learn the concepts, and grow up moving on to bigger and better languages as I did...
Something clever...
What, did you forget about "debug"? Man, kids these days. Go to Start->Run...->"debug". There, learn! :-)
Windows does have a built-in language. More precisely, it has 2 of them, VBScript and JScript. They've been included with Windows since Win 2000 and can be downloaded for 95 & 98.
No comments yet and it's already /.ed. Nice.
In response to the summary, I'd say the first step is to ship computers with some sort of programming language built-in, but the fact is that programming is a complex thing these days and there's no way to just make it simpler so that kids can learn it easily. If you want to learn to write real programs, you'll just have to commit some time and effort to it. That's why I decided to change my major to physics.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
I think the problem with teaching programming to youth these days is the perception of learning a "language". Instead of subjecting students to the CONCEPTS of programming, such as inheritence, oop, etc., schools are more inclined to teach children languages instead. It produces grades, I presume.
The trouble with that presumption is that kids get so accustomed to one language that when they get to college and learn the concepts, they have to throw all they learned out the window and start fresh. Why can't we start these kids off the right foot and wean them off of the language dependency?The way I see it is children should be taught the fundamentals of programing at a relatively young age (12-16), like looping and recursion, and let them experiment with the fundamentals with their own choice of language.
------
Amadaeus
The last bastion of Mathie-ism
Python
No programming language ... or BASIC.
I won't put in the obligatory Dijkstra quote, because by the time I finish this sentence, about 200 people will have posted it already.
Oh, what the hell:
Squeak is an nice environment to learn programming. It is highly portable, includes graphics, sound, and a great programming environment. See www.squeak.org for more info.
Bah!
All you people do is whine and whine about languages!
Back in my day, I had a bunch of OR and NOT gates and some solder. When I was very good, my parents would buy me an AND gate for my birthday. Those were the days.
Hand them a Knoppix CD and a book on Python.
Or let them get python for Windows, if you must.
If I was going to start my kids into programming I think I'd start with some easy shell scripts. Seems like you can do almost everything that BASIC did with bash, ksh, etc...
If they can get past doing some basic stuff like that you can move them up to a more complex and capable platform.
My Ass hurts.
There is a pascal based language called 'Turing', a language that is taught as part of many entry level computer course in high schools of Canada. There is an OO version called Object Oriented Turing, which does run under Windows. Do note that while those languages are extremely limited (to a point that is painful), I was able to do some amazing games that people stare in amazment at and that actually was the starting point of my coding life.
Do remember, those that have an interest and initiative will find themselves looking for ways to start coding, such as searching for compilers on Google and go from there.
Please direct all bug reports to
Yes, MS is devoid of programming, but Open Source solutions, such as Linux and BSD, have solutions right out of the box. True, gcc is there, but the place where the kiddies can start is simple shell scripting. Perl and Python can be used later.
I don't think that the real problem is with the lack of tools, but with a lack of motivation. When I had my VIC-20 in 1981, I had to write BASIC programs because there was little else to do with it.
There is a neat game that uses java to make robots. Starting very simple, as you learn to program you make more powerful robots to compete against others.
IBM Robocode Home
Covered on slashdot here:
Robocode Rumble: Tips From the Champs
And here:
Learning Java Through Violence
Wax on, wax off baby!
VB is a great beginners language, and as no self-respecting hacker would ever be seen using it, microsoft might as well give it away free.
They almost got split into two companies the last time they tried bundling something with Windows...
er, hello? Windows does still come with QBASIC. Go to run, type QBASIC... or CMD->DEBUG ;)
There's a huge difference between these two. Knowing a programming language doesn't inherit that you are able to design applications. I've seen so much spaghetti code in my life, I'm really glad that development (or the ability to feed custom lines of code into your computer) became so "hard".
Sure, when I used to own a C64, I could code stuff as I wanted it to, and I knew that my code will run on everybody's else C64, too. But today, you have to develop your applications in a team, which has to run on different platforms (even Win2K and Win98 are a difference!), and has generally became very complex. But that's another story.
Every problem has a solution, but every solution creates new problems.
Windows comes with Notepad and IE. Little Coders have access to JavaScript; something that can run circles around the BASIC of old.
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
Learning to code is so much easier with a good structured language. Download the JDK from sun (free as in beer). That and a text editor gets you started. If you want a pretty IDE, Eclipse, Forte4J, and Borland jBuilder personal edition are all free downloads, and are fairly full featured. I am teaching my nephew to program using these tools. So far, he is picking it up fairly quickly. For teaching, I think that a strongly typed language makes it easier.
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
Give them a full GNU/Linux install. It will include gcc, glibc, autoconf, etc..
Or you could make them build their own LFS system like I make my kids. Sink or swim I always say.
OS X
Learn AppleScript, then Perl, then C (with GCC). All comes on the developer disk, or a free download.
If you can't get a Mac (and given how cheap the Macs are getting, that's a smaller proportion of the audience), why not start with command line batch programming, then download ActiveState Perl or Python, then learn some Java, then you can decide whether you want to sell your soul to MS and do VBA and VC++, or slap some Linux on that box.
After all , that was a simple yet powerful language for children losely based on LISP.
15 years ago it was all the rage , now it seems to have disappeared off the map. ANyone know why?
My son has taught himself to program, with only a little guidance from me for learning how to analyze and break a problem into parts, by writing his own text adventure games using a programming language called Inform . This has worked very well - it allows him to express his creativity in the development of a scenario that requires following explicit rules to succeed, and to develop his programming skills in learning to express an algorithm that follows those rules he's created. The Inform community tends to freely share the text adventures they've written - you know a developing programmer is motivated when he spends time pouring over someone else's not-always-well documented source code.
By the time linux is commonly found on little coders computers, Gambas should be a nice solution as a visual, free basic.
Struggling to find a day everyone can make? WhenShallWe.com
I remember first learning how to program with BASIC on a commodore 64. Back then, it seems that the environment one was presented with (may it be Apple II, commodore 64/128, amiga, etc) was more conducive to kids learning how to code simple things on their own. You got frustrated with the limited immediate options and began to make things on your own. Nowadays, most kids first start using some shiny colorful OS (think winxp) and when bored can simply start surfing the web for stuff to do. Makes kids much less likely to seek out a rendition of Basic and code away.
Only a few years back a colleague brought up this very issue, and we agreed that it looked really bad. Apparently, freshmen in college back in the Spectrum days performed better in introductory programming courses.
However, I think that since then things, or at least opportunities, have improved: I am thinking of Lego Mindstorms, perhaps combined with NQC, a simple C-like language for Lego's computer brick. This kit is simply marvelous in playability, and had I had that kit as a boy, I am sure that I would have learned programming at least as well as with my Spectrum.
I don't believe this has improved freshmen's programming abilitites though, but perhaps with time?
As others have pointed out already, Linux and all its programming environments will probably provide very good starting points these days. I have for instance seen Java introductions that are more accessible than what we had in the early eighties!
Reality or nothing.
Although it's not a programming language, I've found that most of the kids getting into programming these days started by making web pages in HTML. As they wanted to do more on the web, they opened up to scripting languages, like JavaScript, VBScript, ASP, PHP, etc. That eventually led them to CGI scripting or writing Java Applets and it has progressed from there.
Most hardcore types probably cringe at the thought, but web development is really the catalyst into getting many kids interested in programming.
Most Windows machines have Office installed, which includes Visual Basic. For example, if you're at the library and someone has locked out everything except the browser and Office, try this:
/., but probably 90% of kids have access to a machine where this is possible and in three minutes they get access to a complete, powerful programming language and a trick they can use to impress their friends.
1. Open an Office app, type alt-F11.
2. You should be looking at a VB editor. From the menu, select Insert/Module.
3. Enter this code:
Sub CmdWin()
Shell ("cmd.exe")
End Sub
4. Click the arrow button. Now you should be looking at a shell window.
Simple stuff for the readers of
All the people that I know that got started with programming on their own did so with QBasic, which came on windows 95 (the new operating system when I was 12). They couldn't get enough of their computer, and searched through it until they found the QBasic IDE and accompanying sample game programs.
;) If an educational version of VB had been on my first computer, I never would have gotten off of it.
The benefit of this sort of "buried" programming treasure is that the kids interested in their computer will always find it, and really feel like they discovered something great - I know I did. It doesn't even require a tutorial, just some sample games, maybe.. but for sure, all of those true-born geeks will get hooked and start learning as much as they can (I know I did).
The motivation for the OS packagers? What better way to get people hooked on your system than to give them their first bit of cocaine?
Neverwinter Nights comes with a toolset that includes a compiler for a C-like scripting language. A beginning programmer can write simple programs to create monsters, make them do things, cast magic spells, etc. It's got to be the most fun way to learn programming I've ever seen.
Most scripting languages are freely available on any platform. I think it may be a good starting point to learn programming: programming process quite simple, no (or few) prequisites and now you can do anything by scripting (Cf. perl).
PS: I don't mean that's easy to write scripts, I think good script writers are rare, but I think it's apropriate as a astarting point.
Eventually, the same thing that has happened, largely, to HTML will happen to all other programming languages--which is to say that eventually all code will be machine written. We are rapdily reaching, and many of us would agree, I'm sure, that we have long since passed, the point where teams of human coders are efficient enough to maintain the vast expanses of code that comprise most modern applications and operating systems.
Young students today should not be studying programming--they should be studying Human-Computer Interface Design and other related subjects. Programming should come later, once the student has figured out *what* to program.
Figuring out where to start in programming is alot more difficult now than it was in the '80 due to the explosion in programming choices available (Java, C, C++, vc.net, vb.net, ...). Tools may be better (vis. Visual Studio, Eclipse, etc.) but the learning curve for a new programmer to get a "hello world" program running on most platforms is steep to say the least.
I've just picked up Python and after coding in C, C++, and Java it's like a breath of fresh air. No haggling with the compiler over types, simple intuitive syntax and a very helpful interpreter that let's you test code on the fly.
Python is also free, runs on many platforms, has a huge range of modules to choose from and for a beginning programmer it's coding style is very clear (unlike perl).
New programmers can start by defining functions and then explore OO concepts as they gain confidence.
I would recommend "Learning Python" by Mark Lutz as a great starting reference.
By sticking to Java the child will tend to learn clean programming design and algorithms, rather than wild pointer debugging tricks (also the case with BASIC I might add). As an added bonus the child will be learning one of the most commercially viable languages, and one with a lnog lifetime ahead of it IMO. I'd also begin exposure to SQL (MySQL or Postgres) when you felt the child was up to the added complexity and workload. Up to this point the cost has been $0.
Once the child (now 14 or 15 I'm sure;) was proficient coding in Java, I'd suggest exploring C, assembler, drivers and low-level machine architecture. Within a couple of years any CS program in the country should be easy pickings.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Well, the simplicity of those days won't be coming around again, but hey - you don't have to program on a Desktop PC. :)
Get them Lego Brainstorm (I think that's it called) and they gonna have tons of fun and afaik a programming language of acceptable difficulty
When they are older they'll probably use the programming language of their choice and learn that programming means more than a few hundred lines of code - it also means structure (no spagetti-code), style (goto = evil) etc.
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
What's wrong with Delphi?
It has the modularity, strong type checking and simple sintax to help you start learning.
I beleive you could download version 1 (16 bit?) for free - but Im not sure.
Just my $0.02
Download, install, and run. Read the tutorials on Sun's site.
If a kid can't do that, then programming isn't for them.
It's available for free for most platfoms.
As easy to learn, but not that strong on the "bad habbits forming" part is Visual Basic. It follows a completely different programming model to "normal" newbie languages but it is much more "goal-oriented" than most beginner languages. It is also easier to produce impressive results with it, and, frankly, the VB (and Visual Studio) IDE is as good as they get.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
This is exactly why linux is huge. Its the :)
perfect development environment for anyone. Want to learn c/c++/java/perl/python/visual python? Want to run servers? Learn sockets? Maintain a website? And irc server? opengl to emulate your fave 3D gamer heros? Its all free for linux! Incidentally, I wouldnt be surprised if at some point microsoft just gives away its development environment because as everyone knows "what the kids program on" is what will be huge in 5 years. That said at the elementary school level
you probably want to code using something like "turtle on", "turtle off" logo which is also free (GPL) for linux. Ahh those Apple II logo days
-bloo
D/l'd a copy of UCB Logo(1) and started working through _The Great Logo Adventure_(2) w/ her---she got a big kick out of making the computer do what she wanted, esp. once I showed her the abbreviations (FD == forward &c.). Minor glitch was TGLA was writte n w/ MSW Logo in mind, so TRI was undefined....
) http://www.squeak.orgc e1/widget/merge.shtml
Other things I've been meaning to try with her include:
Boxer(3), which oddly is only readily available for the Mac. It's positioned as an alternative to Logo and feels a lot like Squeak(4).
Apple had a s ystem called ``Cocoa'' (this was before the NeXT purchase) which was lauded for kids' programming, but not finding much about it now.
One commercial program which I'm saddened has vanished is Widget Workshop by Maxis(5) and wasn't carried farther.
That last really points out that a more visual tool might be better for kids. Although there's been some interesting research on this(6), none of the available tools(7) are really suitable for kids excepting Drape(8).
William
(1) http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/logo.html
(2) http://www.softronix.com/download/tgla.zip
(3) http://www.soe.berkeley.edu/~boxer/index.html
(4
(5) http://www.superkids.com/aweb/pages/reviews/scien
(6) http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~maratb/cs2 63/paper/paper.html
(7) http://www.nwoods.com/sanscript/index.htm
(8) http://www.cs.uu.nl/~markov/kids/drape.html
Ë
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Squeak is a cross-platform implementation of smalltalk that has developed quite the little community of educators and students around it. It allows budding programmers to start on a very basic level - something reminiscent of hypercard - but underneath it all is a real language that allows all the power and syntax you might want. As soon as you're ready, the power is there.
The scheme environment bundled with How To Design Programs has a similar goal of allowing the student to gradually ramp up the complexity of the language, but I find their rigid levels confining. Also, the programs a beginning programmer is able to put together are nowhere near as satisfying visually as what a new squeak user can build. (These kids today - in my day, we had either text or 40 by 40 graphics and we liked it.) That said, the htdp scheme environment may be more appropriate for a structured classroom environment with a series of lessons.
My only complaint about squeak is the license (despite claims on squeak.org, it's not really an open source license because of the fonts it includes); however, it is free-as-in-beer and has been already been used in elementary and middle school classrooms for both teacher- and student-created projects. (See squeakland)
At age nine is started messing around with QBASIC. Windows 3.1 had just come out and wasn't yet ubiquitous. I became quite proficient with BASIC, eventually, but by the time I had, the GUI extravaganza had begun. I was downloading and playing games for which I hadn't the slightest clue how a programmer might begin to implement such things. At some point, faced with the prospect of not being able to accomplish anything 'useful' with QBASIC, I stopped programming altogether.
I'm twenty one now and the itch to get back in to programming has been bugging me quite a bit. Now that I'm using Linux for pretty much everything -- and because Linux encourages tinkering -- I've found that scripting (Perl, Python, Ruby) languages (not THAT unlike BASIC) are the perfect place to start to refamiliarize myself with data structures and general programming concepts. The clentcher is of course that the CLI is once again useful and the programs I write can actually do something.
Namely, I've found Ruby to a great place to get started since I'm just beginning. Because Ruby is completely object orriented, it hasn't required a whole lot of reforming of the way I think about data -- everything is either a noun or a verb; an object or method. Just like the real world. After just two weeks of studying the freely available Ruby books online, I've been able to begin accomplishing basic system administration tasks. My passion for manipulating logic system is returning and I have some great ideas about what I can accomplish with it.
Sure, some day I'll probably have to pick up Java or (shudder) C++, but for now, scripting languages are the perfect entry method.
The people saying "just use Linux/FreeBSD/OtherOSS" are missing the point..
The problem isn't that Windows doesn't come with a programming language, but that there is no "learning system" in place..
I grew up in the 80's, and I learned to program first with my Vic-20, then with the C64..
I learned by typing in programs found in Compute! magazine and Compute!'s Gazette..
Such an environment simply doesn't exist today - even with Linux or FreeBSD (or how about Java if you don't want to learn a new OS?) the internet makes it harder to get into.. Instead of spending time typing the code in, you just download it.. sure, you can read it if you want, but reading about something is not the same as doing it - you don't get the same experience out of it.
Physically, programming is typing stuff, but with the internet, there's no incentive to actually do it - and like most other animals, people are (by nature) lazy.. so even if they have the drive to learn, they might not have the drive to actually do the work.
I tried using Robocode to teach my nephew how to code, but it's just not the same thing - he wanted to learn to program (still does, actually) but he gave up after just playing with it for awhile.. typing into a computer to get it to do something was just too foreign to him.
The answer is Linux!
Make sure to impress on the children that SCO is bad at an early age too!
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
OMG.
Today: The freaking Internet, computers all over the place at home and school. Free UNIX clones. Perl, Java, C, C++ all for free.
When I was a kid: Just enough computers at school to cause fist-fights over them. Applesoft BASIC (somebody shoot me). DOS on a "good" day. I never had access to BBSes. (Dad had the only modem, and he sure wasn't letting me use it.)
Oh, and as a bonus, there was no dotcom-Matrix Geek Sheik. I'm sure school is still tough on geeky kids, but in the post-dotcom age of ubiquitous computing (and damn near ubiquitous Internet access) I find it hard to pity today's geeklings.
-Peter
I'd download Java for them. It's free (as in beer), you can get it for most platforms (standard on a Mac), it might be a bit complicated, but it's got big standard libraries. Even more, with Java2D you can draw! My first programs were all simple demo's, so I see that as a big plus.
I think the bigger problem with getting newbies to program is that programmers are sort of elite. When I first started programming I did silly things like make an arrow "fly" across the screen by doing a very very simple text mode animation, which made my peers thing "wow that guy is amazing". Now I'd get laughed out of the room for the same program. I think that new programmers will have a hard time getting past that first hump because there isn't enough appreciation of the small stuff.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
And Windows 95 had QBasic on the CD.
The problem is - where to find the documentation to get started. Windows built in help is useless...
It seems there's a bit of documentation on Microsoft's web site under http://www.microsoft.com/scripting/...
o/~ Join us now and share the software
Eventhough BASIC has its problems when it comes to relating it to modern OO languages, it's still a great introduction for younger people into thinking like a computer. Making a computer solving a simple math problem line by line in detail is very good training for a young programmer. No matter how Object-Oriented you make a C++ program, there is always going to be that underlying simple, procedural code. BASIC teaches you how to be procedural in your design of simple algorithms. After mastering BASIC, you can then move on to more advance laguages and topics such as functions and whatnot. But, all in all, BASIC is still great for young programmers.
Totally Life!
ALL replies
IMHO, I think that kids who want to program will learn to program. I mean, the kids who learned everything about their computer 10 years ago didn't do it because the tools were there. The computer was something that interested them and they soaked up all they could when they could. The same is still true.
That all said - I agree, some of the beginning tools are not there in the sense that you no longer have DOS with BASIC. But in another way, you have so much more. Now these kids have the internet to get all their tools. This is where I think the author or the article is missing something - free SDKs are being DLed, and the real wiz kids are learning how to program in much more robust languages than BASIC. Because of such, I really don't see a need for Toy Languages.
RonB
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
When he turned 13, I gave him an old 486, a manual on BASIC, and told him how to find it on the windows directory. Didn't do anything else other than type up a few lines of simple code. Natural curiosity took over. Soon he was writing complicated and lengthy RPGs, similar to what came out in the '80s. Next summer I gave him an old C++ book some visual basic stuff, and some disks. The next summer Java. And now he is going to be applying to a college that offers computer science in the fall. He codes in his sleep now. Oh, this summer's project is to take some boxes, some Linux disks, and make a web server, firewall, and Linux server.
My thought is that if the kid has the normal curiosity then just give them the tools and they will figure it out. There are plenty of old books and software available on Ebay and used book stores.
As a mac user, I feel compelled to bring up Cocoa-- which comes free (or close to free) with any MacOSX package. It's got very little learning curve, there's a strong visual programming element to it (although, if need be, you can replace most of that with setAction:/setTarget: messages.)
I know VB is not the way to go for serious programming, but neither is basic. And you know what will turn off kids or even hardware enthusiasts that wannabe programmers most? Typing in a hello world program in C or C++ or whatever, and having it output in a fugly console window. There is no sense of accomplishment in that. Back in 1980, that was pretty cool. in 1990, that was acceptable. But if you want to ignite a spark in someone, that is not going to cut it today. There are free "Student" versions of VB that MS gives away, that doesnt allow you to make a .exe out of your program, you can just compile/run it on the fly from within the program. And if someone really wants to make an .exe out of it, they can acquire VS (acquire being a nice generic term). Playing with the gui window designer, and then putting code behind those buttons and text boxes will make the aspiring programmer feel like he is doing something cool, and then hopefully send him onto bigger and better things, and eventually different languages platfroms. typing gcc helloworld.cpp -o helloworld, and then having it print out "hello world" in a console box is NOT going to cut it. The goal is not to start out making them serious developers, the goal is to get them interested in programming so they want to become serious developers, and MS/VB perform that function well. You can write many cool applications in VB without alot of effort.
The only other alternative I can think of is a web based technology like ASP/JSP/PHP, but due to the fact that is difficult to get a decent host for a website on a budget of zero dollars that your friends can go to and say "cool!", I think that those technologies lose their novelty really fast. Plus the bar to entry is a little higher, since you have to understand the relationship between the pages and the webserver, as well as configure things correctly, which VB does not require. Apache/IIS can be a little intimidating at fist and after seeking help and getting a load of RTFM responses, said wannabe programmer will quickly give up and just go back to playing PS2.
Curl provides access to a rich 2/3-D graphics engine, excellent "interactivity" with HTML and multimedia support is built-in. It can be as OO as you want. It had the potential to be a great "first" language for coders.
Unfortunately the company (curl.com) is doing an extremely poor job marketing it and is lumbering it with a hideous licencing model.
It'll be dead within a year or two...
since there was little budget for big iron we did lots with Linux (web pages, mail server, ftp server, dhcp, even a commercial student database called Schoolmaster) and the Library teacher told me about a young kid (then in the 7th grade) whose family couldn't get him a computer of his own. I took a 486/120 and installed Linux with no gui on it and we allowed kids to check it out like a library book. I included just the basics to get on... how to login, how to use Lynx, where to find more information, the "man" pages, etc.
As far as I know this 7th grader was the only student who checked out the box. I got a few questions relayed to me by the library teacher and answered them. I lost track of him until my son told me that he turned up at a County Fair at the "internet cafe" my son was running and he was heavily into Llinux!
Last month my contact at the school district told me that the kid, now a junior in HS, is planning a senior project: a Beowolf cluster! He is now trying to round up a few dozen machines to use in his cluster.
This is a small school system in a farming community and turns out only one really good natural engineer/computer scientist every 4 or 5 years but I like to think that my idea of creating a "library book" computer using Linux helped turn out this one.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Whatever happened to pascal?
Lo these many years ago, when I was in first year, pascal was used as the teaching language in many universities, including mine. It's nice enough as a sandbox language to help you learn good programming habits, yet powerful enough to do non-trivial things.
In fact you can download a free pascal compiler to play around with it.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Set up a stripped down Knoppix distro that writes Windoze files (like the full one does) and has a plethora of languages from which to choose. Set it up so it deals only with its own directory and keeps kids mostly away from the Windoze files for their own protection. If they figure out how to get out of the padded room they will probably be capable of not hurting anything.
....
It would appeal to kids because
1. It's not your father's OS (Oldsmobile)
2. It's passed around freely among the "geeks to be"
3. Programs could be passed around since they would run on anybody's machine with the Knoppix CD
4. Cliques would develop because they would know something others don't.
I think it would be a wonderful idea. Even though he is using the common PC, the kid has his own environment with his own tools and complete power!!!!!! It could be a big boost to the development of real programmers.
Game Maker URL: http://www.cs.uu.nl/people/markov/gmaker/
Python is easy to learn, Free, free, fast and portable, but most importantly it's interpreted.
When I was growing up (and using BASIC on the C64) I loved that I could enter a line of code and see the results immediately. It encourages a lot more experimentation as you can effortlessly try anything, be it interactively before you even start writing to test out a concept, or in the middle of executing your program.
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
I think we ought to harness those resources. We ought to use them to teach children those languages that are immensely powerful yet, judged by our standards, too inefficient to be practical. In particular, I'm referring to functional programming languages like Scheme and Haskell.
Now, hear me out.
Why functional programming languages? Because they lend themselves to extremely powerful, mathematical ways of thinking about and solving problems. Learning these ways of thinking when young will benefit our children for the rest of their lives. For example, take a look at the The TeachScheme! Project. I wish something like that was available when I was in High School.
Let us not teach our children the technologies of today but of tomorrow. More and more, I am convinced that functional programming, once considered too computationally inefficient for industry work, will be tomorrow's dominant programming paradigm. No other way of programming so readily lends itself to the formalism that is necessary to manage the ever-increasing complexity of modern software projects.
So, let us give our children the tools they will need to solve the problems of their day. Teach them functional programming.
Easy, automatic testing for Perl.
At Microsoft, we support the hopes and dreams of the world's youngsters. That is why we have chosen not to include useful programming languages with our Windows product line. We feel that children from all walks of life would benefit from working hard, saving like misers and purchasing an enterprise licence for the .Net Studio.
With great regard,
Rippen M. Anueone
Microsoft Sales Department
- Freely available
- Often used to teach programming in educational facilities nowadays
- Has all of the graphical stuff that kids would like
Cons:- Too hard... OOP is too big a learning curve when you just want to write a program that asks for your name and says "Hello, ".
- API is too rooted in com sci theory, another learning curve...
I say go with python. I think kids are by nature impatient when it comes to learning something new and they want fast results. Python comes with an interpreter, so you can get immediate feedback if you type in something wrong. Plus, its free and its as complicated as you want it to be. Kids won't have to learn OOP until they come across a problem that would really benefit from it and by then they've already learned the basics of the language well.Another thing is graphics, and I don't know if Python has an interface to the Windows graphics APIs. I think most young kids would enjoy creating graphics and games, so this would be a must-have feature for a young person's language. But screw LOGO. That was the first language I learned (in 3rd grade) and I was never so bored watching that 'turtle' move around and wondering how I could make Pac-man by rotating the turtle and making him move x pixels (not that its any easier in another language, but at least Apple II BASIC let me use my imagination more)
Unfortunatly it's not very useful to download that on Win2k/XP, as most of the applications in there just spit out "Incorrect DOS Version" and quit. Apparently most of the applications are not NTFS aware.
I read the internet for the articles.
Anyhow, back to the present...
Some kid found my 3D asteriods game on the internet and asked me if I could teach him how to program. Note that he lives in another state, and I've never met him in person.
He was 12 at the time and struck me as being bright. I had him download the free Java stuff from Sun and we developed a video game applet together. We discussed what kind of game to make, how it would work, and the logic behind it. We decided on a simple game and then added features as we went along, rather than trying to implement his initial vision all at once. This let him see that progress was being made.
We didn't get into any OO stuff. In fact the structure of the game is more similar to C than to traditional Java code, but it was stuff he could understand. He wrote some of it and modified much of what I wrote.
You can check out the result here
Here is what I learned from the project:
Lasers Controlled Games!
Now that Mac OS is a *nix clone, it has all of the great programming/scripting languages that any other *nix has. ie: c/c++, perl, python, php. Not only that, but AppleScript is still around. Plus Apple has a free downloadable/bundled-on-cd IDE (developer.apple.com) that can do things like simple c/c++ tools to build full fledged apps based on Apple's Cocoa and Carbon APIs.
Its interesting to hear people say that its somehow a loss because others can't experience things the way they did. First, computers are much cheaper today, and even with the addition of a set of development tools (which are lightyears ahead of what we had in the 80's), than what computers cost in the 80's. Of course, possibilities today are much greater, allowing for vast freedom in experimenting with programming. I can still write a simple address book application, but I can also build in p2p networking capabilities, for example. The possibilities have increased exponentially, while the complexity has not neccessarily increased.
Anyhow, it is no great loss that some kids won't be able to dabble in writing BASIC programs. The world trend is moving programming into a commodity class, just like the other trade skills, such as machining, welding, etc, which lessens the tangible value of the skill. This doesn't mean that knowing how to program isn't useful, but as is the case with other skilled labor, programming as a career is turning into a similar animal. It is heading to be seen as more of a trade job instead of a professional job, where career potential is limited.
OO doesn't mean a scary IDE. OO doesn't mean VB.NET or any other language on the .NET object model.
:) Kids end up learning OO by manipulating actual objects, in the form of graphical "Morphs," giving them functionality, changing their properties... until the day it clicks, and they decide they want a totally new "kind" of Morph.
Smalltalk has been used for teaching kids for 30 years, and with a good amount of success.
Part of the reason kids can learn Smalltalk well is that there is no need to learn and use OO off the bat. You can do a fair amount of stuff in Smalltalk just by using Object-Based Programming, rather than OOP. Object-based means *using* objects, creating them, but without a full dose of creating classes, etc.
Now a days, we have Squeak, which takes it to the next level. Kids can get a big return on their investment of time, creating moving, colorful things, while writing a very small amount of code. Unlike some environments for beginners, it scales up, being useful for creating big and scary applications with a lot of code.
Check out the demos- it's open source, and runs on just about every platform worth runnning, including Mac OS Classic/X, Windows > 3.1 (incl WinCE), and all modern Unices under X11 (or DirectFB, Linux FB, SDL).
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Remind the kids that they need to look at what device, system, or application they'll be writing code for before they even think of sitting down at the code editor. Make sure they know that PCs and Windows are NOT the Answer to Everything, and work accordingly.
One of the things I hated most about the (required for my A.A.S. degree) programming course I took at the local community college was its focus on games. I have ZERO use for game coding in an electronics environment.
Said course would have been far more valuable to me if they had chosen a specific application pertinent to the Electronics Technology major I was carrying (perhaps an introduction to programming the PIC microcontrollers, or 68xxx assembler), and coded for that.
To delve a little further into that line of thought: You don't need Visual Basic or Visual C++ to code a PIC to be, say, an electronic lock or programmable frequency divider. What you do need is a stable development platform, a good feel for simple BASIC, and some idea of how the software you're writing is going to interact with the hardware involved.
On the other wing, you don't usually (that I know of) need to delve into the details of assembly language if you're going to be writing (here we go) a game, or a spreadsheet app, or some similar program that is intended mainly to interact with the user as opposed to running a dedicated function in an embedded device.
No one can be an expert in all programming forms and languages. There's just too much Out There. Help new students to make intelligent choices about what, exactly, they're trying to code for, teach them good ground rules about coding in general, and the rest should follow on its own.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
While I was in University we would play with the Lego Mindstorms kits while we weren't coding our projects. The most amazing thing in my opinion about Mindstorms was their programming IDE. It was completely object oriented.. all of the code looked like lego! IMO a great concept for teaching the ideas of IF/Else, while loops, and basic programming logic.
In fact I would say that even downloading Tcl/Tk or Perl could be overengineering the solution.
The truth is that the Perl environment for Windows is not always intuitive and can occasionally prompt windows errors which are relatively easily understood by someone with a lot of computing experience but can be intimidating to a fledgling coder.
What people have overlooked is that windows does come with a built in interpreter for at least one widely used language: Internet Explorer knows all about Java.
The best part is that the Web is an environment most twelve year old kids are already quite familiar with. You can teach them basic HTML (if they haven't picked it up already) and then get them started on using Javascript. Javascript on a web page has the same sort of instant gratification that I remember from making the screen on my vic20 flash red and proclaim that I was cooler than my sister. Once they are comfortable with Javascript you can move them on to writing full-feldged Java applets (of course all of this coding can be done in notepad (or your favorite syntax-highlighting text editor)). In this way they will learn about object oriented programming. If the kid gets a good handle on writing Java applets and is still interested, they are probabl ready to move onto real programming: teach them C, or whatever else strikes your fancy. Maybe even give them a Linux box.
It's a simple way to learn programming on a modern windows box without having to install any developers kits or worry about system calls etc., and it all works in an environment (the Web) with which kids are already familiar and interested in.
lysergically yours
When I started, it was with the Sinclair ZX-81 I had as a Christmas present.
Today, I don't think it's necessarily the lack of built-in languages (as others have pointed out - most OSes come with a language of some sort) but a lack of where-to-get-started.
The great thing about the ZX-81 is that it came with a manual. Not like a PC manual of today which tells you how to plug in the keyboard and monitor (the ZX-81 manual had this) - the ZX-81 manual also had instructions on programming things - from the basics of programming onwards. It taught you what variables were, what loops were, what if statements did. You got a starting point with the computer as soon as you unpacked it and plugged it in for the first time.
The BBC Microcomputer was the best - it had a built in 6502 assembler. (I also learned Z80 for the Spectrum I had after the ZX-81). Knowing asm made it a lot easier to learn C, especially pointers (which I've noticed time and time again newbies always struggle with).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
What can be done to improve the situation?
There is a big glut of programmers right now, and more and more programming jobs are probably going overseas.
So, why should it be improved? I suggest your kids learn marketing, not programming. Marketing is hard to export because it requires personal contact and knowledge of local culture. The world is different now.
Perhaps you think of it as educational despite future career plans. That is understandable. In that case don't worry about the practicality of the language. Perhaps the Logo language? It provides nice graphical feedback.
Table-ized A.I.
I can't believe some of you are suggesting that an 8-10 year old child should be introduced to programming by way of C, C++, or Java. Are you kidding? Perhaps you've forgotten what it meant to be NEW to programming and don't realize that children are going to approach programming in a different way than a veteran will.
You've got to think about what's going to make sense for a kid. When I was a kid, if I wanted to print "Hello, world!" to the screen I typed in 'print "Hello, world!"'. That makes sense. Do you honestly think a kid just starting out is going to know what all the extra crap he has to declare just to print something in Java means? What the hell do you think "public static void main" means to a kid? How is he supposed to understand that if he wants to "print" he has to use System.out.println? Furthermore, is a kid just starting out supposed to know what static typing is? Give them a language where they can just declare variables. At least that way they can draw a simple parallel to pre-algebra (children understand "x = 5" in math class... they don't have to say "int x = 5" in a math problem, so why would it make sense right off the bat to do so in a computer program)? Do you think children are going to understand even the basic concepts of OO programming? There are undergrads in colleges across the world who are having a tough enough time with that.
I'm going to recommend Python. It's the modern-day QBasic (not meant in a bad way... Python is very powerful, I mean that it can boil programming down the essentials for novices in much the same way that QBasic did). No static typing, simple syntax, and you can program interactively. It's definitely the best thing going for introducting children to programming today.
Ship a free zx80 prototype board with every copy of Windows. :-)
SCNR, Alex.
You look like a million dollars. All green and wrinkled.
With the net and the general increase in computer use in general theres clearly more resources out there for the aspiring programmer. Theres more choice, but you can still download QBASIC if you want. Only now you can get source code that won't be full of typos (anyone recall the back of magazine programs that blighted a generations eyesight?) And then its simple. I think the *real* predicament is actually the gulf between what you want to play (or use, but more realistically for kids, play) and what you can program yourself. This is discouraging. When I started out I wanted to write a text adventure like those I enjoyed playing, which was a tractable goal. Setting out to write GTA4 isn't. Take a look at say the gamedev.net forums. They are bursting with kids who are new to programming and what they have in mind doing amounts to Everquest 2.
Darkbasic (http://www.darkbasic.com) is pretty good for addressing this problem *and* the wish list stated in the article. Program away in what is more or less BBC BASIC but also get relatively easy access to DirectX etc and in particular 3D. Does it teach "good" habits? Probably not, but you can something fairly flashy done within a short period time which is useful motivationally. This is important I think before taking on the more difficult programming challenges out there. It has little or no kudos associated with its use, but I'd argue its the right horse for this particular course. Sure, its not a great language compared to even VB, but I feel its niche is right here. Its not free (although there are evaluation versions for free) but its I think about 30 UK pounds, which is clearly cheap by comparison with say VB.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
BASIC stamps (http://www.parallax.com/) provide a great intoduction to both hardware and software. Kids can write (and debug) programs that actually DO THINGS -- blink lights, make noises, wave a small flag taped to the end of a cheepie servo motor.
Yes, they also offer some of the worst features of a programming language-environment, no type-checking to start with, and there are severe limitations on RAM and program memory.
But these limitations also teach kids about the "real world" -- if you are limited on RAM, program space, and program speed, then you have to actually think about how you're going to solve a problem!
Once upon a time, *nix supported multiple users on a 64kb PDP 11/45 -- and we took pride in tight, elegant code.
Namaste-
It seems that there are two big hurdles that the little coders face these days and it seems that not having a freely available language isn't one of them. There are lots of free quality programming languages complete with extensive tutorials, such as Python (as pointed out by many)or the lesser known but very capable Squeak.
The first hurdle is the education systems vocation focused âoecomputer literacyâ. In the 80's schools really did focus on programming now its focused on learning to use stuff like office programs provided by Microsoft. This trains the student to be a âoeuserâ (as in drug user) rather than master of the computer.
The second hurdle which is hinted at but really spelled out in the article is the operating system and all the other computer components that because of their complexity must be treated as black boxes. Even in the most enlightened Linux using school it is very difficult for the little coders to actually have their programs interact with the hardware directly. While having an operating system is a good thing generally-- it does get in the way when one wants to understand computers at all the levels. Without interacting directly with hardware, students aren't going to have the perspective that brings.
Schools should look beyond programming on desktop computers and use simper devices like Lego Mindstorms or parallax basic stamps which for me solves âoethe Little Coder's Predicamentâ
I'd recommend PHP as an introductory language. It's freely available, is easily installable if you don't already have it (for Linux and Windows, and perhaps the Mac), gives the newbie immediate feedback, on Linux has a command line interpreter that doesn't require a web server (or anything else for that matter), has very simple syntax, and is an exceptionally easy language to grasp. It's the next best thing to the 80s when all home computers came with BASIC in the ROM.
When I was in Junior High, I learned some basic HTML in much the same way. Every computer already has the "tools" you need to do that, a text editor and a web browser, it's easy for me to picture a kid naturally progressing from simple HTML to some Javascript, and then either to Java, or to CGI/Perl/etc. The problem with this is that I doubt that many websites use "plain" HTML anymore. On the rare occasion that I look through the source of a webpage nowadays, it takes me several minutes to find what I'm looking for, and I know what all that code does. I think it would be quite inscrutable to someone just putting their feet in.
On a different note, the article complains about programming tools not being included in the set of apps that come with the OS. MacOS X does come with the very nice (and free) Project Builder, which is a joy to use, and I've used it to write C and C++ code, using OpenGL. (It also does Java and Objective C). Because OpenGL is a cross-platform standard, and since ProjectBuilder uses gcc to compile C/C++ code, it's trivial to port it to Unix or Linux. I can vouch for this personally, having moved large projects for an undergraduate Computer Graphics course back and forth between OSX and Solaris&IRIX, and only having to change the path for the OpenGL header files.
"Inflammable means flammable? What a strange country!" -Dr. Nick, The Simpsons
From what I know of squeak, it sounds like a good environment, but AFAIK it wasn't designed specifically for kids.
Introducing programming to a kid with Perl would have to qualify as child abuse.
;)]
[That being said, I use Perl wherever possible
For the purposes of home schooling, I use Python. The interactive nature of Python resembles the old MBasic and GBasic interpretters; immediate feedback is terrific for learning.
Python's capabilities scale nicely between simple "hello world" and complex applications; my daughters can gradually learn concepts and techniques.
All about me
I program professionally in Scheme, you insensitive clod!
(Seriously, I do.)
I remember reading that Linus used to program games in machine code when he was a kid(can't remember what system that was...)
I'd pay to see a kid(or anyone) do that today.
My experience - early 80s home computing in the UK
---
Back in '83 my father bought the family a BBC B [1], and not long after playing the bundled games thoroughly I found the User Guide, tried out the teletext examples to do double height text, the moving man vdu23 example, and didn't stop until I got to the end. It was a wonderful learning experience..
Switch the Beeb on...
*blur*beep*
BBC Computer 32k
Basic
> 10 PRINT "Ooh look a programming language"
> 20 PRINT "that is right there at power up"
> 30 PRINT "and easy enough for a preteen"
> 40 GOTO 10
> RUN
From that prompt BBC BASIC was right there available to you from power up. Want to draw a triangle - plot 85.. play a middle C note - SOUND 1,-15,53,5. Now is that or talking to DirectX via C/C++/VB/Delphi/etc easier for a child?
Along with the Beeb, plenty other 8 bit machines also provided a simple to use programming environment right there by default at power up. No extras to have to buy, no alternative OS's to install, and what plenty of people who've posted here seem to be completely forgetting - a learning curve suitable for a pre-teen.
Nowadays
---
I think the article is spot on. A child who sits down at an out of the box Windows PC can do nothing more than play Solitaire. Sure there is plenty that can be done if you know about it. This requires purchase of $50+ books, programming languages, or knowledge to wipe the system and install some Unix variant with an oss compiler, etc. These are out of reach for a child. Even if a knowing parent had sorted out one of these solutions, it is still have a steeper learning curve.
It's all about accessibility, and nowadays programming really is less accessible to young children. Anyone who can't see that either wasn't there in the 80s or lives in an alternative reality.
[1] Huge UK success. Never cracked US market. See here for some background history on it.
[2] For the BBC, Electron, etc there was Micro User, A&B Computing, Acorn User, Electron World, and others besides. The C64/128 had Crash, Zzap, etc, and for the Speccy there was Your Sinclair, and lots of others I've forgotten.
--- Commission free trading & free stock up to $500 - use http://share.robinhood.com/kelvinp6
POV-Ray is a free raytracer for making computer-generated images. You can build up 3D scenes using the Scene Description Language (SDL), rather than a modeller; and after a little practice, you naturally move toward writing algorithms to generate more complex images, etc. It comes with lots of sample code, a good help file, and could be used as a way to learn programming. The nice thing about it is that the language itself is simple to use, and making pretty pictures is a good incentive to keep practicing and learning more.
You can do pretty nice things with the SDL. The help files explain how to write a raytracer within POV-Ray. You can also read and write text files, etc.
There have been many, many "robot programming" games written for just about every platform. Some use their own mini languages, some use real world languages. Some, like Core Wars, are even portable and semi-standardized. As a category, these are definitely a great introduction to programming.
But my grandest creation, as history will tell,
Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.
Kids want to make cool stuff. In 1984 I could write a stupid script to scroll my name on the screen using TI BASIC. I could also write a neat graphical maze game with speach synthesis using the same tool. With Windows Scripting Host and JavaScript (etc), I can write stupid stuff, but not cool stuff. Anyway, how many people here know how to fire up WSH and go? I don't think that's even in the manual.
At least with DOS 2.11, the manual said I could run "BASICA" and, by the way, try out these few lines of code.
I had classes in the 4th and 6th grades with C64 LOGO and Atari Basic. It was neat back then. In 2003, neat is 3D graphics and surround sound. Are you going to get a kid hooked on programming with a few batch files? I don't think so.
The old TI rags used to publish code listings for games like "Dogfight" and "Conquest of Camelot." They were in BASIC and you had to type them in from the magazine and save them onto an audio cassette. I spent hours as an 8-year-old typing in lines of code that I didn't understand. It was cool to see what would happen when you typed "RUN" though.
In the 80s, programming was one of the things that you bought your computer for, other than games. So if a computer didn't have a tool to program it with, it was either junk or a game console. Not everybody had a computer back then, but those who did kinda liked it.
Now that there's money in computers as a commodity, it's another story. People still buy computers for games, but not for programming. Besides, if you program, you might become competition, and that's not good, especially if you give your code away for free. That and the increasing complexity of computers and operating systems make languages diverse and specialized.
So instead of computers that say, "hey, see what you can do with me," we have computers that say, "hey, you can run Word and Half Life and surf the Net if you have a license." And we're moving closer to "you can't run anything else, even if you have a license to run it, unless it's one of ours." Pretty soon (if Microsoft has its way), instead of only needing a license to run a program, you'll need a licence to make one too.
Anyway, back to the point. If a kid thinks computers are neat, he'll need a system that still lets him try the neat stuff. That is no longer Microsoft unless you've got the cash for VB, which is now an "add on." Can you get VB without buying the whole Dev Studio? I doubt it.
Today's equivalent to my old TI are the Linuxes, BSDs and other "Open Source" platforms that still actively encourage tinkering and learning.
Is Linux programming too hard for an 8-year-old to figure out? I guess it depends on where you start. At least you don't have to buy the extras.
I'm afraid the really cool stuff has been the domain of the big guys for at least ten years now, though. Sorry kids. Well, a few kids might be interested enough to figure it out.
Nobody's stopping us from making a Linux distro geared towards 8-year-old programmers. If we had a language that made it easy to do some neat sound and graphics, it'd be like the old days.
Yes, it's evil, it costs money, but see the advantages:
When I was little, my dad got an Apple IIc. It came with a bunch of disks. The Apple at Work, The Apple at Play, Introduction, The Inside Story, Exploring Apple Logo, and Getting down to BASIC, among others. These were what got me into programming, particularly the "Getting down to BASIC" disk.
The two best things about the "Getting down to BASIC" tutorial were:
- It came with the computer, and I tried out everything that came with the computer.
- It was very, very, very friendly.
This is what we are lacking today. Something that most kids will discover on their own that gets them into programming, WITHOUT the influence of an adult in their life to suggest it.I think we need a well advertised website with a tutorial on it like the Getting Down to BASIC tutorial. A tutorial that you don't have to download or anything; the website has it's own interpreter.
Furthermore, for most of the tutorial you shouldn't even be using the real interpreter yet; in Getting Down to BASIC, most of the time the tutorial would type a line or two of code, and then ask you to finish one word or something. You weren't really in the BASIC interpreter at all. If you typed the wrong word, it would give you a fake error message and then explain in detail what you did wrong, and ask for another guess. If you made a common mistake, it had a response tailored for that. It also heaped congratulations on you when you did something right. Only near the end would you type in an entire line of code at once or maybe even a whole short program.
I think just telling kids to go use Python is way off. There's like a million steps in between "go learn Python" and writing Hello World. Among them are "download and install Python", "Run the interpreter", "figure out what an "interpreter" is ", "figure out what a "program" is", "find out how to quit out of the interpreter", "figure out why typing "i want you to put my name on the screen" doesn't work, even though i'm saying essentially the same thing as they are saying in the tutorial, overcome confusion and frustration when you say "Python" and the computer says
etc. With Getting Down to BASIC, all you had to do was put in a disk and follow the instructions. Almost anyone who could read could do it. This is what we need. For example, I think that when you are at the tutorial website and you get to the point where you type "Python", the computer should reply something more like this:
)A thanks to those who sent personal stories about how they learned to code. Kind of fun to read about. Didn't expect the amount of responses, of course.
With all the comments that have been posted, it seems a lot of you believe there is no problem. That there are a wealth of intriguing technologies for kids who want to find them. Which is true. Kids can build websites. Kids can hack Hotmail. Kids can mod games.
I still feel like we haven't cracked the door open on mainstream coding. I believe a majority of humans could learn to code. How many students are required to take math, chemistry, physics? Could programming become a commonly taught skill?
Many of you have suggested that the job market would die. Are you kidding me? The job market for programmers would undoubtedly swell. More using the Web, more understanding the need for software, more purchasing software to help their casual coding. Better yet, the more who understand how to code, the fewer people have to say they are "computer illiterate!" Instead, clients could possibly have a better understanding and appreciation of the things we do.
Let's push coding to the mainstream. There are those among us who can influence the world to make such a thing happen. I believe it could be well worth it.
When I was young, about in 3rd grade, I ran across my first book on computer programing in the school library... naturally it was a neat little colorfully illustrated book on the BASIC programming language. Unfortunately my family didn't have a computer at home at the time, but there isn't much syntax to the language anyway, and I ate the book up like candy. I actually sat down and wrote out all sorts of programs on our word-processor (fancy typewriters that used to be big but died out as computer prices came down) which I could never run.
Oh how I longed only to try my programs for real! But none of my friends who HAD computers knew anything about where to go in the system to look for a place that would accept input in BASIC. They probably had GWBASIC on there somewhere, but they certainly didn't know it. I actually remember the first time I got to run a program... it was in a toy store that was selling one of those "Kid's computer" type toys and it was on display. It said it could be programmed, so I went up and typed:
PRINT "What's your name?"
INPUT $NAME
PRINT "Hello, "; $NAME; "!"
I can't begin to express how pleased I was to see "Hello, Shon!" appear on the screen just as I expected it to.
We finally got our first personal computer in 1994, but it wasn't for a long time that I realized that, buried deep in a directory, was a program called QBASIC, which I eventually had quite a run with.
This brings me to the question: As I've seen new computers ship over the years without even QBASIC on them, I feel bad for all those kids who'd like to try to program, but don't know how. Sure we have the internet now, but downloading something like GCC is probably a bit much to ask for a 3rd grader who's never used anything but Windows. I really think that Microsoft should create a Windows GUI version of QBASIC and include it in the start menu just to encourage kids to play around with it. Barring that, OS's like MacOS and Linux that include C/C++ compilers win lots of points in my book. One other thing that I think that has especially helped get kids interested in programming is making Web pages... they see a cool thing on some other page and they wanna learn how to do it. Java's pretty complex for most kids, but there's a huge incentive in that it takes relatively little effort to do something that will really impress your friends, while it can seem like languages like C/C++ let you do nothing but output text.
So yes, I think that all OS's should include some sort of compiler with a GUI as a basic part of the operating system. If a basic paint program and writing program are worth including, then a basic compiler is definitely worth including as well. Lots of kids are interested in programming a computer at some level, but have no idea where to start.
Err, that link should be to here. Sorry!
For those of you who weren't paying attention in the early to mid 80s, Bert Kersey was the mad genius behind Beagle Bros Software, the coolest software company out there. Their catalogs were a hoot and their products exhibited a complete disregard for taking themselves seriously (this site will give you some of the flavor of the Beagle Bros style), but their best claim to fame was their software. Not only did they write programs that let you do cool things with your Apple II, they showed you how to do the cool things yourself. They were open source years before its restoration to hipness.
Maybe what we need is someone who enjoys building marvelous toys and then distributing the plans so we can see how they're built, along with a programming environment a kid can use "straight out of the box". If I were doing this I'd do it in Python and distribute it on a CD with Python interpreters for the major platforms to give a kid the best possible chance of being able to start playing right away.
Someone you trust is one of us.
The real problem these days is examples. And I'm not talking about downloading the kernel source to see how to write programs in C, either.
Back in the Early Days Of Microcomputing (1980, give or take about five years) there were a number of sources for Basic programs that you could type in to your computer. Once they were typed in you could see how the code correlated to what was on the screen. You could also steal, er, ah, learn from the code in building programs you had created yourself.
Creative Computing, Compute!, 80-Micro, Softside, Beagle Bros (mentioned in another post farther up the page) . . . if we really want kids to get hooked on computers, we need something like what these magazines and companies provided.
Someone you trust is one of us.
I learned networking instead of programming.
When I first became interested in computers, we already had Windows 95, a system that didn't lend itself well to absolute beginning programmers that were 10 years old. I did want to learn to program, as learning to network is decidedly more expensive. I started with Qbasic. It comes on the 95 install disk, if I recall correctly.
I was able to do the rather trivial things in "Qbasic for Dummies". The problem was, I knew they were trivial. And when I showed a program I had written to someone, they weren't all that impressed with a little blip moving around the screen becuase they regularly used apps like Office and played 3D games. I wanted to write things like Office. So I pretty much gave up becuase I didn't really enjoy creating those insignificant programs.
Fast forward to now, and I can easily amaze Joe User with my networking skills, becuase the things the network does isn't what they typically see while using a computer. Nor are they what I had typically seen. Networking allowed me to do things that I hadn't seen with my own eyes a million times before.
I have learned some programming skills, mainly scripting (shell scripts, PHP, and a small amount of Perl). I learned to write small scripts primarily to enhance the network or for web development. But put me in front of some C or Java, and I'll look at it and kinda understand what's going on, but not to a point where I could do anything usefull.
My main problem was my own motivation. I didn't see the end results as being interesting, so never bothered to learn to a degree of usefulness.
Had I began programming on an Apple II, where I could make graphics similar to what mainstream games looked like, or write an actual useful program, I could have imagined myself being a much better coder.
-phish
Being a Father of now an 18 year old that has been playing with computer since he was 10 or so and can say he has found his own path to learning code. Like all kids cool sites and programs are spread by word of mouth and email. Gaming what else hold a young mind! There are a lot of free game writing program out there and have been out there. He wrote his first games around 13 using a free Windows based program writng DOS games in basic. At 15 he got together with 4 of his freinds built their own development team. Built a little DOS based role playing game and even sold it. Imagine letting my 12 year old inside my computer? Personally what I have seen I would rather have a 12 year old inside of there more than someone my age (49 jesus you're an old fart!) Kids these days grow up with it they teach it in the schools, and the kids have a need to figure out what makes it work (ust like the rest of us geeks) I agree that html is a good starting point. I mean what do you need but Notepad and a book of code and the passion to learn. Its a easy (see what I did!) and pretty simple language to learn. Kids understand the pratical application of the language and can see the results quickly through a web browser. After learning html XML is fairly easy and this looks like this is where the world is headed. Notepad is better I think to learn the basics of coding anyway, AND no need for high dollar development software. There is also a plus to this track of learning. High dollar development software does make the job faster and easier (yes I use it yes I do this for a living and time is money) but starting out with it you don't learn what make it work you just "see" it in the WYSIWYG. They also learn to get by and make what they have work. I guess the moral of my dribble is I think will have plenty of good programmers in the future.
Squeak smalltalk is a briliant language for smalls. Runs on all small computers under your o/s of choice. Your work will be completely shareable because the Virtual Machine is identical on all hardware platforms. It leads on to the the most productive language ever created.
Squeak smalltalk for kids
Squeak smalltalk for grownups
Smalltalk for business
Smalltalk for engineers - Very fast.
There are many others, have a look through The Smalltalk Portal.
Just remember that with 30 years of developemnt it just works!