Slashdot Mirror
Stephen Wolfram: No Need To Teach With 'Toy Programming Languages' Like Scratch (wolfram.com)
theodp writes: From Stephen Wolfram's blog post announcing the Wolfram Programming Lab: "It's a very important — and in fact transformative — moment for programming education. In the past one could use a 'toy programming language' like Scratch, or one could use a professional low-level programming language like C++ or Java. Scratch is easy to use, but is very limited. C++ or Java can ultimately do much more (though they don't have built-in knowledge), but you need to put in significant time—and get deep into the engineering details—to make programs that get beyond a toy level of functionality. With the Wolfram Language, though, it's a completely different story. Because now even beginners can write programs that do really interesting things. And the programs don't have to just be 'computer science exercises': they can be programs that immediately connect to the real world, and to what students study across the whole curriculum. Wolfram Programming Lab gives people a broad way to learn modern programming — and to acquire an incredibly valuable career-building practical skill. But it also helps develop the kind of computational thinking that's increasingly central to today's world." So, when it comes to programming education, are schools hitchIng their cart to the wrong horse?
Guy with profit motive thinks his pricey programming environment is better than one that is free.
Teaching "how to program" to the general population isn't about teaching a practical skill.
Just like Math, the point is to get students to understand Logic and Reasoning skills.
Similar to how P.E. class isn't meant to teach children how to play dodgeball, it's about making sure they understand the importance of being active, and know various ways they might be able to enjoy that.
If a "toy language" is more approachable, go for it.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
My daughter (7 years old) spend 10 minutes choosing proper shade of pink for a cat in her first Scratch game. I don't think that Wolfram can even start to compete in same category of fun. She was a lot more interested in possibilities of making things meow or bark rather than trivially connecting her results to per square-furlong gross national product of 10 most polluted cities in the world.
If you are targeting 12-15 year olds, sure, pick whatever. They are forced to learn French, they can be forced to learn any other strange programming language. But for 5-8 year olds, let us play with Scratch. And having to explain that father does bit different things at work than picking between pink colors for cats... he picks between different shades of blue for odd lines in table css... yes, it is kind of a cat for grownups, just square and painted in blue stripes.
I wish people would stop quoting that. First, it's junk and second it's incredibly out of date. The quote is from 1975.
BASIC in 1975 was not very good.
BASIC by 1982 was much much better. BBC basic (first released in 1982) had simple structured programming with named procedures and functions, local variables and etc. By 1987 BBC BASIC had acquired proper blocks, and was quickly followed by QuickBASIC in 1988. Those are the only ones I know of.
The glib quote about BASIC has been out of date for approximately 30 years.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Actually, I disagree it should be about algorithms and data structures to begin with. In fact, it's a terrible idea. Don't shoot for "productively", don't look for "creating suitable models of real-world situations". That's way too much way too fast.
You don't teach a kid to build stuff by letting them build a real functioning bridge. You give them some legos or building blocks and let them run wild with it. Let them realize things fall over, or collapse, or don't fit.
What we need is a way to accomplish small, discrete, achievable tasks ... as quickly as possible, in a way they can fiddle with permutations and see the outcomes, and with as little abstract concepts as possible. At least, not ones which seem like abstract concepts.
You're not trying to make people who are professional programmers ... you're trying to establish "if I do X, Y happens ... if I want something which is kinda like Y, I need to do something which is mostly like X but different in this way".
One of the exercises I saw done in junior high/high school to teach people the root concept was to get them to "program the robot". You have them walk someone through the steps of doing an easy task for a human ... ideally the "robot" understands you can ONLY do EXACTLY what they tell you, EXACTLY as stated, and that you CAN'T interpret for them.
"Go get the book" results in nothing. Step with your left foot, step with your right foot, extend your hand, open your hand, close your hand. I had a class mate who just couldn't wrap her head around this until a teacher and I did this after class ... once she'd done it, she suddenly kinda went "oh, so I need to break this down into a bunch of small steps it already knows how to do". She was never going to be a professional coder, but suddenly she understood the underlying fact ... computers are idiots and can't do anything on their own.
The idea you need to formulate a set of steps, plan it out and describe it correctly to do something is what you're learning when you first get introduced to the concept of "programming". And it's incredibly eye-opening how much people struggle with even that as a concept.
Start throwing around words like algorithms and data structures, and people will switch off LONG before you've taught them a damned thing.
You need to lay the foundation to help people being to grasp what it means to start filling in those blanks, and extrapolating to a more generalized solution. You can do an awful lot of that adevelopers.slashdot.org
What you describe is not suitable for teaching kids, or establishing the concept. It's for people who are going to be pursuing something much more rigorous and formalized.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I looked at teaching my kids scratch. I bought this book called super adventures in scratch. Sort of a comic book that knitted together diverse simple programs into a made up adventure story. No teaching of concepts just moving icons. I did not think much of it but I gave it to my kids.
Man was I wrong. that book was absolutely perfect for a 7 to 9 year old. they gobbled it up, and competed to finish chapters. played the games, and them tried to modify them. all on their own.
I could not have imagined a better introduction. And it reminded me a lot of my own self propelled learning by copying BASIC programs out of KILOBAUD magazine (dating myself).
The challenge then was that computers were slow so you had to figure out how to make programs go fast. The problem today is rather one of managing complexity. And this is where scratch beats wolfram as a language. Scratch has the ingredients we now consider essential most notably event dispatch, listeners and everything that makes objects work. The objects scratch mainly uses are literally iconified (usually a cat or something).
So yes, no one is writing a word processopr or computing sattelite trjaectories in scratch. but it cuts past the crap of languages (remebering syntax) but teaches you the abstract concepts just as a matter of course. There really isn't any good linear program in scratch and even calling subroutines is rare. You many dispatch messages to objects.
Wolfram is right if you already know about programming and are fixated on doing some calculations. but in regards to learning scratch is sugar coated health food that kids love.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.