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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?"
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! :-)
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.
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!
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.
Kids don't want a "how to program" book. They want to write small, simple programs that do cool things. Gcc/gc++ and friends? For a 10-year-old? I don't think so.
What is required is a very simple interface with simple commands. Programming is about Problem Solving (I resisted the urge to put that in caps). It is not about coding style or compilers or interfaces, any more than a sports car is about the CD changer in the trunk.
Logic is logic. What we need *is* a return to a simple environment for kids. The smart ones will run into restrictions of the environment and branch out into other environments on their own.
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.
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.
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.
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.
give them a game to play which sneakly teaches them to program.
There is no god
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
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
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.
My experience - early 80s home computing in the UK
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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
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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.
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