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Better Tools For Programming Literacy
waderoush writes "Adam Wiggins, co-founder of Heroku, agrees with anthropologist Bonnie Nardi that programming isn't just for geeks. The problem, he says, is that today's tools for teaching programming are woefully inadequate. In a commentary, Wiggins argues that there are two major gaps preventing programming tools from being accessible to beginners: 1) they're too fussy, requiring extensive setup, and 2) they're focused on the technology rather than everyday tasks. A good tool for learning programming, Wiggins argues, would emulate an Excel or Google Docs spreadsheet – beginners would be able to fire it up instantly, and would be able to get useful things done right away. (He's dismissive, though, of visual programming tools that 'attempt to hide logic behind a point-and-click interface.') 'Broad programming literacy is crucial in a world increasingly made of computers,' Wiggins says. 'Despite common stereotypes, programming is not out of reach for the average person,' as long as the tools are easy to set up and specialized on the programmer's task."
It is a far more demanding task that "geek" would qualify you. It requires talent, education and experience. Those that gripe about the tools do not get it or have never gotten beyond toy examples. Sure, a better tool helps. But when you create software (as opposed to slapping together some disaster waiting happen), the direct level of skill needed to use the tools is actually a minor concern. In fact, the language used is a minor concern, the problem is what matters. Insofar I even agree with the article. But refusing tools that are a bit complicated is the hallmark of somebody that does not get it.
Case in point: Pen and paper are exceedingly difficult to use for writing. Yet we spend years on every person to qualify them to use it. Yet compare the complexity of pen&paper on one side, and a computer on the other side. Anybody expecting the computer to be easier to use just has no clue at all.
All that "simple" to use tools for software creation do is cause even more really bad programs to be written, as suddenly everybody and their grandmother thinks they can do it. Like giving calligraphy pens to amateurs. Sure, they can produce some smears, but they cannot produce anything worthwhile.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It seems to me that a great deal of people have this idea in their heads that any and everyone is able to do any and everything. This is bollocks.
Furthermore, blaming the inability to get interested in something or to cross a certain difficulty barrier on the tools is just laughable.
If one can't take the first step in programming and get acquainted to the tools, he won't be able to make the later steps either. It takes commitment and interest. Reducing the first barrier won't bring a lot better programmers, it will bring in a lot more bad programmers that get stuck half way through and don't really help anyone.
He's saying programming is not as simple as Excel because programming doesn't have an equivalent of the SUM() function that does almost all the work for you when you are new to it.
Yet, excel never tells you that you have to use the SUM function, or that A:A means the whole A column, or that $1$3 means it shouldn't change the row/column when spreading the formulas. But he wants the development environment to somhow not require knowledge of how a loop works, or what an array is?
The problem isn't that programming is harder than Excel, at least not if you use a full-featured IDE with a decent language, like Visual Studio with C# 4.0. You can learn to drag a few controls to a new window, double-click on a button, and write something like "MesageBox.Show(textBox1.Text);" in seconds. No knowledge of arrays or functions necessary.
Programming is NOT harder than excel, and there ARE tools that make it as easy as possible. Anything else requires "visual programming" which he states he doesn't want, either. But of course, excel doesn't "hide the logic" from you, right?
The fact is, you need some basic knowledge to do any job. Excel requires knowing the syntax and function names, so does general-purpose programming, just like you need to know the parts of a car, and their use, if you ever want to build one from scratch.
Considering that a basic devkit like Eclipse (sufficient to write a lot of Java code) can be set up by downloading, unzipping and double clicking on the file with the colorful picture, I can only concur.
You are missing a few steps, like installing the JDK and possibly installing the JRE, figuring out what the heck this workspace thing is. The Hello, World example you copied from the Internet also doesn't work because the package doesn't match. Congratulations, Hello, World compiles in Eclipse, but you want to see it as a standalone program. You click on your .java or .class file, 'Windows can't open this file'. After googling the problem, you find out that you need to run it from the command prompt by typing "java hello.class" so you become comfortable with cd.. until you get to your workspace and find the 'bin' folder. You try it, 'java can not be found or recognized'. Now you have to add the jdk to the path.
This is because people are not interested into the problem, they are only interested by the solution.
And this is true for everybody: personally, I don't really care about how my car works, I just want that it works.
When it does not work, I go to a garage to solve my problem.
Trying to simplify programming will only give a false sense of expertise, because REAL programming is tough: it's about solving abstract problems.
No matter the difficulty of the subject, there will always be people who are interested in understanding, and people who don't care (even if it's simple).
So I would prefer that, instead of training people who don't care about programming, we train people who are interested into programming.
And the best tool to make people interested into programming is games, because a lot of programmers started programming because they wanted to write their own game.
The VCR clock was required to set up a scheduled recording, so hardly pointless. People wanted to be able to do that, but couldn't because they couldn't figure it out. I think the gp's example holds
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