As the many suggestions above attest, there are many languages and strategies for teaching children to write software.
The thing about education is that it's supposed to help children to learn stuff that they'll find useful outside of the classroom. If they learn Scratch or Logo, where will they use that? If you want them to learn the more abstract principles of programming, you'll have to explicitly teach those too but that may not transfer well to other programming languages. You see, the thing about learning is that it's very specific, and transfer, i.e. taking knowledge from one instance or domain and using it in another, isn't what most people believe it is. We tend to transfer more abstract, intangible knowledge out of one domain into another in which we're already proficient. In other words we don't magically acquire logical reasoning skills in other domains from learning to think logically about writing code.
See: Schwartz, D. L., Bransford, J. D. and Sears, D. (2005) ‘Efficiency and Innovation in Transfer’, in Transfer of Learning from a Modern Multidisciplinary Perspective, Greenwich, CT, Information Age Publishing, pp. 1–51 [Online]. Available at http://aaalab.stanford.edu/pap...
The current research suggests that learning to write software makes children good at......writing software......and little else. Any claims about logical thinking, mathematical thinking, etc., or transferable skills or knowledge have yet to be substantiated.
Re: "grammar and syntax rules" -- Are you sure these words mean what you think they mean? And whose standard are you referring to?
BTW, languages are complex probabilistic systems and so rules are unlikely to describe common usage with sufficient accuracy to be meaningful. Yes, there are large tomes of grammar rules for sticklers to memorise and pontificate about but they only describe the lesser used fringes of formal language and writing. The vast majority of language usage that remains cannot be described as "rule governed."
I think what Washington's basically saying is that autonomous vehicles are replacements for taxis and transport/delivery trucks, not personal cars. I wonder if he's thought about personal cars that can do both?
"rewire the neurons in your brain" = learning. We all do it all the time. Re: "Are Interactive Computing Devices Addictive?" -- Social media services; Facebook, Twitter, etc.; are designed to be as addictive as possible. They make their money out of having lots of eyes on their web pages so they hire gaming (read: gambling) consultants to "game-ify" their services, and like the gaming industry, they do it regardless of any negative effects this may have in people's lives. The biggest difference is that the gaming industry is strictly regulated, social media is not. Cory Doctorow gave a presentation about how this works at TEDxObserver a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... I hope this helps:)
You can't trust closed source, proprietary software, full stop. It may be ethical and secure today but how will you know when that changes if nobody but the company selling you the software/service can do a security and privacy audit? And what if they get a national security letter one day and push an update that sends all your passwords and usernames to the NSA?
Re: "The proposed bill would amend the Communications Decency Act to eliminate a provision that shields operators of websites from being liable for content posted by third-party users." -- In other words, they've used trafficked women and sex workers as a premise for whatever hidden agenda they may have. Can we have a look at the bill's.docx metadata? Perhaps written by lobbyists for... whom?
...to complex social problems will never work. The internet it the way it is because nobody's applying reasonable restraints on the big IT companies. Political solutions are more likely to be effective but that's where the big IT companies are spending their money to make sure that never happens.
...that opinions about Adobe Flash are emotional, polarised, and poorly informed. PR is the art of encouraging people to hold irrational, poorly-informed beliefs for an ulterior motive. When something gets to this state in public opinion, then it's time to start looking for which PR campaign(s) are responsible. My guess is that Apple Inc. and Google don't like software that can run in web browsers that can compete with apps. In addition, it's far riskier to install an app on your operating system than to run Flash in your browser.
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Yay, home fireworks! :) https://www.youtube.com/result...
As the many suggestions above attest, there are many languages and strategies for teaching children to write software.
The thing about education is that it's supposed to help children to learn stuff that they'll find useful outside of the classroom. If they learn Scratch or Logo, where will they use that? If you want them to learn the more abstract principles of programming, you'll have to explicitly teach those too but that may not transfer well to other programming languages. You see, the thing about learning is that it's very specific, and transfer, i.e. taking knowledge from one instance or domain and using it in another, isn't what most people believe it is. We tend to transfer more abstract, intangible knowledge out of one domain into another in which we're already proficient. In other words we don't magically acquire logical reasoning skills in other domains from learning to think logically about writing code.
See: Schwartz, D. L., Bransford, J. D. and Sears, D. (2005) ‘Efficiency and Innovation in Transfer’, in Transfer of Learning from a Modern Multidisciplinary Perspective, Greenwich, CT, Information Age Publishing, pp. 1–51 [Online]. Available at http://aaalab.stanford.edu/pap...
The current research suggests that learning to write software makes children good at... ...writing software... ...and little else. Any claims about logical thinking, mathematical thinking, etc., or transferable skills or knowledge have yet to be substantiated.
Re: "grammar and syntax rules" -- Are you sure these words mean what you think they mean? And whose standard are you referring to?
BTW, languages are complex probabilistic systems and so rules are unlikely to describe common usage with sufficient accuracy to be meaningful. Yes, there are large tomes of grammar rules for sticklers to memorise and pontificate about but they only describe the lesser used fringes of formal language and writing. The vast majority of language usage that remains cannot be described as "rule governed."
I think what Washington's basically saying is that autonomous vehicles are replacements for taxis and transport/delivery trucks, not personal cars. I wonder if he's thought about personal cars that can do both?
"rewire the neurons in your brain" = learning. We all do it all the time. Re: "Are Interactive Computing Devices Addictive?" -- Social media services; Facebook, Twitter, etc.; are designed to be as addictive as possible. They make their money out of having lots of eyes on their web pages so they hire gaming (read: gambling) consultants to "game-ify" their services, and like the gaming industry, they do it regardless of any negative effects this may have in people's lives. The biggest difference is that the gaming industry is strictly regulated, social media is not. Cory Doctorow gave a presentation about how this works at TEDxObserver a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... I hope this helps :)
You can't trust closed source, proprietary software, full stop. It may be ethical and secure today but how will you know when that changes if nobody but the company selling you the software/service can do a security and privacy audit? And what if they get a national security letter one day and push an update that sends all your passwords and usernames to the NSA?
Re: "The proposed bill would amend the Communications Decency Act to eliminate a provision that shields operators of websites from being liable for content posted by third-party users." -- In other words, they've used trafficked women and sex workers as a premise for whatever hidden agenda they may have. Can we have a look at the bill's .docx metadata? Perhaps written by lobbyists for... whom?
...to complex social problems will never work. The internet it the way it is because nobody's applying reasonable restraints on the big IT companies. Political solutions are more likely to be effective but that's where the big IT companies are spending their money to make sure that never happens.
...that opinions about Adobe Flash are emotional, polarised, and poorly informed. PR is the art of encouraging people to hold irrational, poorly-informed beliefs for an ulterior motive. When something gets to this state in public opinion, then it's time to start looking for which PR campaign(s) are responsible. My guess is that Apple Inc. and Google don't like software that can run in web browsers that can compete with apps. In addition, it's far riskier to install an app on your operating system than to run Flash in your browser.