Ubiquitous Computing Gadget To Teach Coding

An anonymous reader writes "A distance learning university in the UK has revamped its IT curriculum to attract more students — the biggest change is that budding coders will get a chunk of hardware which plugs into a computer via USB and can be programmed using a language called Sense — based on MIT's Scratch 'drag and drop' programming language. The university hopes this gadget-based approach will encourage fewer students to give up on their studies."

Comments

Scratch and Sense programming? Seriously?

[alta]

Programming is too hard with all that darn syntax and obscure words and stuff. We have to make this for the common man. So now, programming will all be done via Scratch and Sense.

Sure, need a loop? Drag over a loop. Need and if/then/else? it's on that toolbar over there. Need to consume a web service? Look in the Mashable toolbar.

Oh, need to parse a string of text to see if the input matches your criteria? No, that's called regex, you'll need to find a real programmer to help you with that.

Need to test your security/performance/useability? Sorry, go see that real programmer again.

Re:Very interested to see what people do with this

[pixelpusher220]

Start adding stuff to make it useful on real projects though, and you'll see it used in real projects. "Easy to learn, visual" and "good for long term maintainability" tend not to belong together.

1990s called, they want their Visual Basic back ;-)

VB plus Access was a world class application demo tool. Fast n easy. The problem was 'ship it' was what usually came out of the demo targets mouths...