[ExI] Open source programs to get more kids to code

Mike Dougherty msd001 at gmail.com
Tue Oct 1 03:16:55 UTC 2013


On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 8:38 PM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sep 30, 2013 6:37 AM, "BillK" <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:
> > For some reason boys don’t seem
> > to like Alice very much
>
> > the edit screen is not your standard
>
> > 'code' view, instead it’s friendly to kids by giving them pull down
> > menus of actions.
>
> Uh huh.  "Friendly".  And have they tested a "standard code view", much
> less an IDE that catches basic mistakes like a missing }, on these same
> kids?  (Not hypothetical kids, not their own if their own wouldn't be using
> Alice outside of the test, but the same actual users.)
>
> Even kids can be turned off by UIs that get in the user's way.
>
>
I used Alice for a multimedia class.  I wish the code IDE could be retooled
for web scripting environments like javascript, php, and sql.  I don't
think it would work as well for huge projects, but we shouldn't be building
huge monolithic projects these days anyway, right?  I also feel like
Alice's drag & drop coding would be excellent for touch interface.  If
Alice-style IDE and Firebug-style editor combined, programming would be
much more intuitive.

as far as the "storytelling" Alice goes, I doubt it is obvious that "boys
don't like Alice very much."  I think it is more likely that girls prefer
the storytelling, stage directing, control of the 'action' that is afforded
them in the storytelling Alice mod.  I wonder if this is a gender bias that
we're still programming onto children.

Anyway, I wanted to endorse Alice for being a pretty cool project overall.
I went looking for other game-like means of teaching programming.  One of
my favorite back-in-the-day Apple //c games was Omega.  Your battle
winnings could be used to purchase better virtual tank hardware and the
clever/efficient "AI" software you wrote for it is what gave you any hope
of surviving battles vs other tanks.  Yes it was primitive; and it was fun.

I'm not sure if we can teach that experience as "fun" anymore.  It seems
like any activity that takes more than 3-4 minutes to learn and start
receiving positive reward feedback is probably going to be abandoned for
those that do.  Maybe we're not yet wireheaded, but it seems we're heading
towards wireheading even if it's wireless by the time we arrive.
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