LOGO forces a step by step approach to everything without a consideration for code reuse. I do think that there needs to be an early exposure to thinking that way.
That's ridiculous. Code reuse is difficult for professionals to achieve to any significant degree, and is not a topic for beginners to explore to any depth. (Just a simple example. Do you remember all they hype surrounding OOP and code reuse? No one in their right mind makes that claim now, but it stuck around for years -- repeated by professionals and even taught as gospel.)
In the simpler sense, Logo undoubtedly encourages you to write reusable procedures.
This is something they'll learn early on:
To Square Repeat 4 [Forward 20 Right 90] End
I'm guessing that you're either not a teacher or you're not very familiar with Logo.
If there are any essential elements to programming they'd be:
1) Direct sequencing 2) Iteration (a. Bounded, b. Conditional) 3) Branching (a. Conditional, b. Unconditional) 4) Data Types and Structures (Scalars, Aggregates, etc.)
At six, with something visual and interactive like Logo,1 and 2a are not only easy to teach, learning and applying them can be tons of fun. They'll also learn some important critical thinking skills for free, all at their current level of cognitive development!
They don't need a foundation in Boolean logic before they start learning about computer programming. Heck, computer programming is a great way to teach them about Boolean logic.
What's wrong with this? Why on earth would you think they'd be "scared for life"? That just doesn't make sense to me.
I don't see how that first bit is relevant. You had a book about Logo that had a weird/poor example?
there is no variable no database in logo,
You'll find that just about every Logo supports variables -- I can't think of a version that doesn't. I can't speak to DB access in Logo, though that's not really a fault of the language, is it? Either way, the lack of DB access does not diminish it's pedagogical utility.
the next attempt was basic which was all just spaghetti of gotos,
It's not the languages fault that you wrote bad code, you know. "Spaghetti code" is not a consequence of using an old unstructured BASIC any more than it is for assembly. This is irrelevant to the question, of course, which is "Why does Logo suck?"
So... What's wrong with Logo? Why is it a bad choice for teaching 6-year-old children the basics of computer programming? I honestly can't think of a better tool.
It should be clear that neither of those things work. Word problems are a common problem for many students, who learn only how to turn the problem into a problem of the form that they're currently studying -- and that's if you're lucky.
In history classes, "why" questions never come up. Teachers are struggling just to get the students to repeat "what happened".
Even if both cases worked well, students can't develop the deep critical thinking skills that are required by computer programming in those subjects. Computer programming is a near direct way to develop those skills. That's the point.
But to do it you need a good teaching staff to guide the students and to force them to think beyond naive interpretations.
Good luck with that. Good teachers are few and far between. Besides, many teachers aren't skilled thinkers, despite being college educated. That isn't helping matters.
I won't call computer programming a "magic bullet" but it's the best way to develop critical thinking skills in students that we have. I say who cares if they never touch a computer for the rest of their lives -- the skills they develop with computer programming are essential and, consequently, it's essential to teach students computer programming.
The original point: I can list just as many failed products and initiatives for Apple as you do Microsoft -- does that mean that "their vision for the past decade or two has mostly been wrong.",/b> Of course not.
Who said it did? The first was your reply comment, the latter was my earlier one.
It just goes to show how incompetent the Apple zealot truly is...
The problem, of course, is that despite all the elementary teaches who put "develop critical thinking skills" in every other lesson plan, no one has a good way to teach or otherwise develop those skills in their students. Go ahead. Hunt down a primary or secondary teacher and ask them if their lessons help students develop critical thinking skills. The reflexive answer should be "yes". Then ask them how and watch the color drain from their face. (The point? Students aren't developing critical thinking skills because teacher's don't have the tools at their disposal to foster the development of those skills in their students.)
Computer programming, however, requires students be able to think critically. You can't really teach it, but programming is a great way to force the development of those skills in students.
The skills that they learn in their programming class will be automatically applicable to every other subject, such is the nature of critical thinking.
This is why teaching computer programming is important. It wouldn't matter if they never touched a computer again.
The only objection I can see is from those who think that being able to program makes them special somehow or feel that it would threaten their jobs in some way.
I'll bet that's at the root of most of the negative comments here.
At the age of 6, it's really all they can do. And, yes, it's a great way to introduce computer programming -- they could even toss REPEAT in to the mix.
You want conditional branching? Great, but that can come later. You know, when they've developed the cognitive capacity to actually understand and use those concepts. (See: Piaget's theory of cognitive development)
Again, as you seem incapable of reading, Apples UI is a different issue from a different example. Yes, it is a usability nightmare. From the zillions of functions crammed in to the home button attached to three different was to press it, the functions of which change with context! (If you don't know why this is bad design, you need to do some serious reading.) Look at the absolutely abysmal suite of gestures -- hell, just the five-finger swipe is all you need to see how poorly their UI adapted to changing user expectations. (A five-finger swipe is not just poor ergonomics, it's unintuitive and not discoverable. Compare the same functions on a properly designed UI like on the PlayBook) That's just for starters. Maybe you should pull your head out of Job's rotting ass and look at their UI objectively. If you're incapable of that, at least try out a properly designed UI for comparison.
The original point: I can list just as many failed products and initiatives for Apple as you do Microsoft -- does that mean that "their vision for the past decade or two has mostly been wrong." Of course not.
Your nonsense relies on the unfounded (and unsupportable) assumptions that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, arising naturally from certain kinds of complex systems and that the content/nature of subjective experience is objectively determinable from the physical state of such a system.
The first point is just hand-waving, completely lacking evidence, supported only by a set of metaphysical assumptions. The second is pure conjecture, grounded in nothing.
There is an additional consequence here: that consciousness is epiphenomenal -- which is obviously ridiculous. (If that were true, it would be impossible for the you/your brain to report on the content of subjective experience. An additional system would be necessary to examine the state of the system to determine the content of subjective experience. Of course, such a system can't evolve as any selection mechanism would first need access to the content of subjective experience in the first place!)
It doesn't look like you've thought this through. You can do better, this is simple stuff.
Yes, Apple's UI is a usability nightmare. Go do a google search.
Of course, that's completely irrelevant to the main point. That is, your argument isn't meaningful as I can make the same claim about any company, including Apple, by presenting a massive list of their failures over the years.
So, when I say that Apple's UI is horrible from a usability perspective and the fandroids say ' the market says otherwise' they're wrong?
Also, as I pointed out earlier, I can make a huge list of Apples failures and make the same claim "Apple's vision for the past decade or two has mostly been wrong".
It's a stupid argument no matter who makes it. Get a clue.
This will be fun. A discussion about pop philosophy centered around a book written for the casual reader presented to an audience that, history has shown, knows absolutely nothing about the subject, yet assumes that they know everything.
I expect the quality of comments here to be on-par with those found on rapture ready and world net daily.
Lol! So you're saying that Whitehead didn't write about science?
I have here several bibliographies of Mr. Whitehead. You know they fail to mention the book you mention. Why? Because it is one of his mistakes.
LOL! You couldn't be more wrong! It's one of his better-known works! If you can't find a reference to it, it's pretty clear that you're too incompetent to bother with further!
Oh, you're also a liar, as it's obvious that you haven't ready anything about Whitehead. Well, that's redundant as all German Pigs like you are liars.
Sorry, but it's pretty obvious that you're too stupid and ignorant to further participate in this discussion.
For your interest: the book you mention is about western science only.
Funny, you said that whitehead didn't write about science! Again, my point was that science was a uniquely western phenomenon. That's why it didn't develop independently in other parts of the world. This is not a contentious point, it's well-established historically.
I know that being a German pig this kind of simple point is difficult to understand. Try a little harder next time.
By the way, you noticed the book is from 1925? So the claim 'undisputed' is obviously riddiculous...
See, this is why being "educated" in Germany is such a problem for you. (Ha! as if Germans could be educated!) Age has nothing to do with it.
Also, because you're a German Pig and I need to explain everything to your simple mind, you'll note that I recommended that as a place for you to begin learning because Whitehead has a nice history.
Can German's learn?
(BTW, I insult you only because I know that you're not very bright and that insulting you makes you amusingly upset. I've explained this to you before.)
You really should stop posting about things that you clearly know nothing about. I know, Germans are terrified of learning -- especially about history! See, history shows that Germans are stupid pigs that will follow anyone who promotes ideas that makes them feel important. It's really quite sad and pathetic. You're a prime example.
Yes, I have read a good bit of his work. Why the hell do you think I recommended him?
Alfred North Whitehead does unfortunately not write about chineese historians, or scientists either
Yup, as I suspected. You fucking German pigs are beyond stupid. It's pretty obvious that you have no idea what you're talking about.
In Science and the Modern World Whitehead gives a nice history of the development of science. It's well written, so I would hope that even a German can understand it.
If you can get your weak German mind around a few basic principles and actually read something, you'll find that what we call science was indeed uniquely European. As I pointed out earlier, this is not a controversial point.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, you did.
No matter what, LOGO sucks but
LOGO forces a step by step approach to everything without a consideration for code reuse. I do think that there needs to be an early exposure to thinking that way.
That's ridiculous. Code reuse is difficult for professionals to achieve to any significant degree, and is not a topic for beginners to explore to any depth. (Just a simple example. Do you remember all they hype surrounding OOP and code reuse? No one in their right mind makes that claim now, but it stuck around for years -- repeated by professionals and even taught as gospel.)
In the simpler sense, Logo undoubtedly encourages you to write reusable procedures.
This is something they'll learn early on:
To Square
Repeat 4 [Forward 20 Right 90]
End
I'm guessing that you're either not a teacher or you're not very familiar with Logo.
If there are any essential elements to programming they'd be:
1) Direct sequencing
2) Iteration (a. Bounded, b. Conditional)
3) Branching (a. Conditional, b. Unconditional)
4) Data Types and Structures (Scalars, Aggregates, etc.)
At six, with something visual and interactive like Logo,1 and 2a are not only easy to teach, learning and applying them can be tons of fun. They'll also learn some important critical thinking skills for free, all at their current level of cognitive development!
They don't need a foundation in Boolean logic before they start learning about computer programming. Heck, computer programming is a great way to teach them about Boolean logic.
What's wrong with this? Why on earth would you think they'd be "scared for life"? That just doesn't make sense to me.
Hey, it's not my fault that you're wrong. No need to resort to name-calling.
You'll get over it. Give Steve's rotting corpse some extra "love" time tonight and I'm sure you'll feel better.
I don't see how that first bit is relevant. You had a book about Logo that had a weird/poor example?
there is no variable no database in logo,
You'll find that just about every Logo supports variables -- I can't think of a version that doesn't. I can't speak to DB access in Logo, though that's not really a fault of the language, is it? Either way, the lack of DB access does not diminish it's pedagogical utility.
the next attempt was basic which was all just spaghetti of gotos,
It's not the languages fault that you wrote bad code, you know. "Spaghetti code" is not a consequence of using an old unstructured BASIC any more than it is for assembly. This is irrelevant to the question, of course, which is "Why does Logo suck?"
So... What's wrong with Logo? Why is it a bad choice for teaching 6-year-old children the basics of computer programming? I honestly can't think of a better tool.
It should be clear that neither of those things work. Word problems are a common problem for many students, who learn only how to turn the problem into a problem of the form that they're currently studying -- and that's if you're lucky.
In history classes, "why" questions never come up. Teachers are struggling just to get the students to repeat "what happened".
Even if both cases worked well, students can't develop the deep critical thinking skills that are required by computer programming in those subjects. Computer programming is a near direct way to develop those skills. That's the point.
But to do it you need a good teaching staff to guide the students and to force them to think beyond naive interpretations.
Good luck with that. Good teachers are few and far between. Besides, many teachers aren't skilled thinkers, despite being college educated. That isn't helping matters.
I won't call computer programming a "magic bullet" but it's the best way to develop critical thinking skills in students that we have. I say who cares if they never touch a computer for the rest of their lives -- the skills they develop with computer programming are essential and, consequently, it's essential to teach students computer programming.
Yes, they did.
The original point: I can list just as many failed products and initiatives for Apple as you do Microsoft -- does that mean that "their vision for the past decade or two has mostly been wrong.",/b> Of course not.
Who said it did? The first was your reply comment, the latter was my earlier one.
It just goes to show how incompetent the Apple zealot truly is...
The problem, of course, is that despite all the elementary teaches who put "develop critical thinking skills" in every other lesson plan, no one has a good way to teach or otherwise develop those skills in their students. Go ahead. Hunt down a primary or secondary teacher and ask them if their lessons help students develop critical thinking skills. The reflexive answer should be "yes". Then ask them how and watch the color drain from their face. (The point? Students aren't developing critical thinking skills because teacher's don't have the tools at their disposal to foster the development of those skills in their students.)
Computer programming, however, requires students be able to think critically. You can't really teach it, but programming is a great way to force the development of those skills in students.
The skills that they learn in their programming class will be automatically applicable to every other subject, such is the nature of critical thinking.
This is why teaching computer programming is important. It wouldn't matter if they never touched a computer again.
Hear, hear!
The only objection I can see is from those who think that being able to program makes them special somehow or feel that it would threaten their jobs in some way.
I'll bet that's at the root of most of the negative comments here.
Why does Logo suck? It's Lisp with a Turtle and usually has a very friendly immediate mode.
What would YOU have 6-year-old kids use?
At the age of 6, it's really all they can do. And, yes, it's a great way to introduce computer programming -- they could even toss REPEAT in to the mix.
You want conditional branching? Great, but that can come later. You know, when they've developed the cognitive capacity to actually understand and use those concepts. (See: Piaget's theory of cognitive development)
You didn't? What about these posts then?
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3090857&cid=41213407
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3090857&cid=41216499
Some people's children...
Who said it did?
You did. I quoted you directly.
This is a waste of time. I should have known, as you seem hell-bent on becoming the new Bonch.
i'd continue to argue about the iOS UI but it's clear that you're not competent enough to participate in that discussion.
Again, as you seem incapable of reading, Apples UI is a different issue from a different example. Yes, it is a usability nightmare. From the zillions of functions crammed in to the home button attached to three different was to press it, the functions of which change with context! (If you don't know why this is bad design, you need to do some serious reading.) Look at the absolutely abysmal suite of gestures -- hell, just the five-finger swipe is all you need to see how poorly their UI adapted to changing user expectations. (A five-finger swipe is not just poor ergonomics, it's unintuitive and not discoverable. Compare the same functions on a properly designed UI like on the PlayBook) That's just for starters. Maybe you should pull your head out of Job's rotting ass and look at their UI objectively. If you're incapable of that, at least try out a properly designed UI for comparison.
The original point: I can list just as many failed products and initiatives for Apple as you do Microsoft -- does that mean that "their vision for the past decade or two has mostly been wrong." Of course not.
Your argument is pathetic. Get a clue.
Your nonsense relies on the unfounded (and unsupportable) assumptions that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, arising naturally from certain kinds of complex systems and that the content/nature of subjective experience is objectively determinable from the physical state of such a system.
The first point is just hand-waving, completely lacking evidence, supported only by a set of metaphysical assumptions. The second is pure conjecture, grounded in nothing.
There is an additional consequence here: that consciousness is epiphenomenal -- which is obviously ridiculous. (If that were true, it would be impossible for the you/your brain to report on the content of subjective experience. An additional system would be necessary to examine the state of the system to determine the content of subjective experience. Of course, such a system can't evolve as any selection mechanism would first need access to the content of subjective experience in the first place!)
It doesn't look like you've thought this through. You can do better, this is simple stuff.
Science yields better and better deductions about how everything came to be
Deduction, eh? Not big on this science thing, are you?
Wow, you're not terribly competent are you?
Yes, Apple's UI is a usability nightmare. Go do a google search.
Of course, that's completely irrelevant to the main point. That is, your argument isn't meaningful as I can make the same claim about any company, including Apple, by presenting a massive list of their failures over the years.
So, when I say that Apple's UI is horrible from a usability perspective and the fandroids say ' the market says otherwise' they're wrong?
Also, as I pointed out earlier, I can make a huge list of Apples failures and make the same claim "Apple's vision for the past decade or two has mostly been wrong".
It's a stupid argument no matter who makes it. Get a clue.
This will be fun. A discussion about pop philosophy centered around a book written for the casual reader presented to an audience that, history has shown, knows absolutely nothing about the subject, yet assumes that they know everything.
I expect the quality of comments here to be on-par with those found on rapture ready and world net daily.
Should I make a list of Apple's many, many, failures? What would that prove?
What is your point, exactly?
But their vision for the past decade or two has mostly been wrong.
The market has spoken. Clearly, Microsoft is giving users what they want.
No philosopher worthy of the title would ever be a warrior.
WTF?
I don't even know where to begin...
Lol! So you're saying that Whitehead didn't write about science?
I have here several bibliographies of Mr. Whitehead. You know they fail to mention the book you mention. Why? Because it is one of his mistakes.
LOL! You couldn't be more wrong! It's one of his better-known works! If you can't find a reference to it, it's pretty clear that you're too incompetent to bother with further!
Oh, you're also a liar, as it's obvious that you haven't ready anything about Whitehead. Well, that's redundant as all German Pigs like you are liars.
Sorry, but it's pretty obvious that you're too stupid and ignorant to further participate in this discussion.
You German Pigs are too funny!
For your interest: the book you mention is about western science only.
Funny, you said that whitehead didn't write about science! Again, my point was that science was a uniquely western phenomenon. That's why it didn't develop independently in other parts of the world. This is not a contentious point, it's well-established historically.
I know that being a German pig this kind of simple point is difficult to understand. Try a little harder next time.
By the way, you noticed the book is from 1925? So the claim 'undisputed' is obviously riddiculous ...
See, this is why being "educated" in Germany is such a problem for you. (Ha! as if Germans could be educated!) Age has nothing to do with it.
Also, because you're a German Pig and I need to explain everything to your simple mind, you'll note that I recommended that as a place for you to begin learning because Whitehead has a nice history.
Can German's learn?
(BTW, I insult you only because I know that you're not very bright and that insulting you makes you amusingly upset. I've explained this to you before.)
You really should stop posting about things that you clearly know nothing about. I know, Germans are terrified of learning -- especially about history! See, history shows that Germans are stupid pigs that will follow anyone who promotes ideas that makes them feel important. It's really quite sad and pathetic. You're a prime example.
Damn, you Germans are stupid.
This again implies: you have read him.
Yes, I have read a good bit of his work. Why the hell do you think I recommended him?
Alfred North Whitehead does unfortunately not write about chineese historians, or scientists either
Yup, as I suspected. You fucking German pigs are beyond stupid. It's pretty obvious that you have no idea what you're talking about.
In Science and the Modern World Whitehead gives a nice history of the development of science. It's well written, so I would hope that even a German can understand it.
If you can get your weak German mind around a few basic principles and actually read something, you'll find that what we call science was indeed uniquely European. As I pointed out earlier, this is not a controversial point.