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Larry Wall On Perl 6, Language Design, and Getting Kids To Code

Posted by timothy on from the putting-a-perl-in-their-heads dept.

M-Saunders writes: Perl 6 has been a long time in the making, but Larry Wall, the language's chief developer, now says it should arrive in time for Christmas. In this interview with Linux Voice, Wall explains why Perl 6 took so long, and describes how his background in linguistics influenced the design of the language. He also discusses ways to get kids interested in coding, and notes that Python has done a better job so far in this respect.

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  1. I teach kids at a middle school by Hasaf · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Is there anything as simple as Basic for introducing kids to the "basics" of programming that is easily installable on Windows based computers?

    After am introduction to programming my interest shifted to systems dynamics model programming (principally vinsim). However, I would like to be able to help the students learn the basic concepts (7th grade) While C++ has a lot of tools, it is too abstract and complex to keep the students attention. Hour of cide has a Logo toy. Really, I would like an up to date Basic that can be used easily but features that allow a person to do more with it.