Lambda the Ultimate

Early programming languages like BASIC were line-oriented because the user's interface to them was a teletype. Back then, there were also line-oriented text editors, where you'd type a bunch of lines, and then edit by saying "on line 3, replace 'teh' by 'the'".

Soon after actual video display terminals arose, text editors became screen-oriented, and programming languages became file-oriented. Seems like progress.

Nowadays you'd just learn Visual Basic, Java, JavaScript, or Python rather than line-oriented BASIC. If you really want to go retro, download the old BASICA interpretter, or an Apple II emulator.

Logo's fine and imho much better. I had a painful time growing up on BASIC, I soon realized that I needed to be saved. I taught myself some logo, played with turtles for a while and then felt much better after making recursive drawings.

I think for kids today, making pictures using programs is a very rich way to teach programming.

Logo might be suitable for younger children...as a teenager, I remember that having the option to use Logo or Basic on the Amstrad 6128, I chose Basic, because it felt a more 'mature' tool, and everything else was coded in Basic too.

I think though that the Basic model (i.e. a program is a list of commands) is a very simple model that sits well with the young minds...other models like object orientated or functional programming are more complex and therefore maybe unsuitable for first teachings.

On the other hand, starting with a pure functional language maybe is better in the long run, because the programmer's mind is not 'littered' with the imperative model. I think it is easier to go to imperative from functional than the other way around.

I think that one of the reasons that 'Johny can't code' is because programming languages are not as accessible as they were. Today's languages include huge and scary IDEs, projects and solutions, huge APIs and a level of knowledge that is scary for beginners. Even the available Basic languages are not that simple. For example, in order to draw something on the screen, the programmer has to open a window, create a class, get a device context etc. And the plethora of choices does not help either.

but I can't help but notice that I'm reading it using a web browser, a tool shipping on every computer and including a full-featured but pretty accessible programming environment (JavaScript). I'm not sure how it could be said to be any worse than Basic for teaching young coders.

Logo (including StarLogo, StarLogo TNG, and others), Squeak, Scratch, and even Microsoft's Kid's Programming Language are all excellent options for begginers programming environments. See my related blog entry.

I thought the python-based environment RUR-PLE looked promising. It's an update (in spirit only) of the older 'Karel the Robot'. Of course it's hard now to tell what makes sense to kids who know nothing about programming.

teaching to program at the hands of a full fletched programming language seems like teaching to read at the example of a joyce novel.

modern educational tools like kara avoid this problem and allow entry level education at very young age. kara is a graphical interface for building finite state machines. it teaches the underlying concept of program evaluation (in obviously non-functional context) without the complexity of programming languages.

the bottom line is:

learning a programming language is simple. in the end, in comparison to natural languages, it is nothing else but a syntactically and semantically nearly trivial foreign language.

learning the abstraction of (stateful) programming is the intractable task. there is no former knowledge to built upon for this for pupils.

there are english and german papers available on kara and this topic at swisseduc, a highschool grade computer science education institute.

What's important is having an easy to use graphics API. I don't mean easy like GLUT or SDL, say. I mean easy. On my BBC Micro years ago I could type a command to go into a 'high-res' graphics mode and then start interactively typing in graphics commands. Within 5 seconds of switching it on I could have graphics of my own creation on the screen. In a modern OS I have to write a few hundred lines of code just to grab a window reliably, and when I've done that, I can't experiment interactively. Kids need instant feedback. Even the kids of my generation, before ADD had been invented, needed instant feedback.

I think it is worth noting that the ultimate goal of Logo wasn't to teach programming but rather to teach or develop mathematical thinking in kids via programming. I think that the notion of learning via programming can (and should) be extended to other domains. This was the subject of my talk I briefly mentioned here. The approach I envision relies heavily on DSLs, tailored to learning and interacting with specific subjects.

I was reading over the comments to this story when it hit slashdot a few days ago. Someone there (sorry, don't remember who) had made an excellent point as to, perhaps, the real nature of the problem the author was writing about: simply knowing that's it's even possible.

In a modern setting, you buy your new machine, take it home, and it boots up to Windows and you've got everything there in front of you to just click on stuff and make things happen. In the good old days, you turned on the machine and were dropped at a prompt where you had to type commands just to load your favorite games. That would naturally lead the curious into wondering what else they can type there. Next thing you know, they're reading BASIC books and making cool little games or whatever.

I think the author is really lamenting the fact that things aren't like that anymore and while he has the experience required to help his kid(s) get into the technical side of computers, I kind of took away from his article that a part of him is worried about the future as a whole. What about all the kids who don't have technical parents or influences? How will those kids even know they can have power over their machines in the first place? That sort of thing.

Is there a solution to that? I don't know. It's hard to say if it even needs an explicit solution because those who are driven will figure it out somehow. I think there's enough information out there that simple google searches will lead down a path to programming enlightenment eventually. It just might not be as obvious or easy as it was way back when. Or perhaps it just isn't as obvious to those of us who grew up without GUIs.

Although today's computers come with web browsers, which in turn come with Javascript, (and moreover most OSes come with gcc), they still omit one thing curiously, and it is also curiously missing in the foregoing discussion: introductory programming tutorials.

Some of my first computers were BASIC-capable calculators, specifically Casio FX-702P and Sharp PC-1500. Their manuals taught very introductory programming, and some ideas taught were not language-specific. For example, the 702P manual taught flow charts; the 1500 manual advised you to "group only those statements which are conceptually related" (on writing like 40 stmt1 : stmt2 : stmt3); both introduced GOSUB as a factoring construct. Each came with a second book full of programs, and one could have a lot to read. Each of course also suggested further, more serious programming books.

Yes of course similar books are available at bookstores, in libraries, and on the Internet. But from the perspective of a child receiving the gift of a computer package for the first time: what is exposed visibly out of the box is influential to how you think you are expected to play with this new toy. If the manual does not showcase programming, if the desktop icons refer to just surfing and games, you will not be aware of its programmability for a long, long time.

The solution is easy though. Give the gift of a programming book too (or a URL).

MIT has a research program going on called Scratch, a programming language for children. It's a bit like Flash, with a much more user-friendly GUI.

They're also developing tutorial videos for using the system here.

--Bryan

One of the more interesting attempts to introduce older programming concepts to young people was the 1982 text, "Elementary Pascal As Chronicled by John H. Watson" by Henry F. Ledgard, which employs the literary conceit of a series of Sherlock Holmes mysteries solved with an analytical engine whose programs were coded in Pascal.

It would be a most interesting project to update the text to employ a modern language like Scheme if the appropriate copyright permissions could be secured.

This is a timely topic for me, since we just had our first child, and I would like her to eventually have the benefit of some of the wonderful experiences I had as a kid. I'm not a serious programmer, I am a designer who does a little coding (I've written a couple of medium sized Flash applications in actionscript). Even if programming were no longer a part of my life, I'd still feel greatly indebted to the logic and problem solving skills I learned from programming. Not only that, but learning to program at an early age provided me with a strong sense of being able to effect change in my environment. I credit my being self-employed and my entrepreneurial spirit to those early days of knocking out simple programs in BASIC.

I first encountered the joy of programming in the 4th grade, and learned the basics of creating a simple "choose your own path" story (a rudimentary adventure game adapted from kids books that were popular at the time) in an afternoon from a friend who had just introduced me to the school's brand-spanking-new Tandy Color Computer. I quickly moved on to David Ahl's enjoyable BASIC GAMES books, and they opened up a whole new world to me.

Programming teaches systematic, rigorous thinking that equips one to engage life much more effectively. Being conversant with code is also the new literacy. People who can't at least understand "how machines think" are at a distinct disadvantage. Plus, I want my kids to see computers as tools, not as consumer electronics. The distinction is an important one, since I want to train them up to be producers, not just consumers.

Being interested in the golden age of Xerox PARC, I looked up Squeak. However, doing a little reading on this site has made me think twice. Where are people going these days to get the contemporary "BASIC Games" experience? That world won me over as a kid because it was not at all intimidating, and provided fast results that I was quickly able to learn from and adapt.

I guess I could always eBay an old CoCo and some David Ahl books, but surely there's something better?

i've not seen anyone commenting on these two yet:

http://www.inform-fiction.org/
http://povray.org/

Inform has already been talked about here at LtU. It's a system for creating "interactive fiction", or text-adventure, games. You do it by crafting your game in a english-like, OO-featureful programming language.

Povray is a long running quality freeware raytracer for rendering 3D graphics. It comes with a very powerful and expressive Scene Description Language, which is a full-fledged programming language in itself, though macro-based. Although you'll not create large 3D polygonal meshes by hand in said language, like most raytracers it thrives in simple mathematical Finite Solid primitives, syntatically simple to define, and constructive solid geometry operations to cleanly create nicely hand-made 3D graphics in few lines of code.

The reason i'm bringing this up is that i feel both are far more engaging and technically interesting examples of how to reach users who would not be interested in programming activities at all than something like Logo. Having fun by actually crafting a virtual world, either by words or by light, is reason enough to give it a try.

Besides, povray also boosts your mathematical and geometrical skills. And Inform should make wonders for your taste of good literature. :)

there, my little girl will be introduced to programming with these, when the time comes. hmm, or perhaps a subset of Scheme, and these when she gets acquainted to literature and math... :)

I downloaded this free Basic some time ago. It is a comercial Basic developed in 32 bits that has the simplicity of old Basic. It runs on Windows and Linux. No 16 bit emulation! Wow! xBasic

does anyone have any experience with KPL?
http://msdn.microsoft.com/coding4fun/coolapplications/kpl/default.aspx

I did not get mathmatically introduced to real numbers until the 7th grade. It wasn't until 9th grade (Freshman in High School) that I had algebra. It was in the second semester of algebra that our instructor introduced us to computing by way of a tour to the school's computer class/room. The OS was GCOS 3, with BASIC, accessed via a teletype at 110 baud.

I was really introduced to programming by a physical science classmate (also my freshman year) who was taking the computer class. I wrote little programs solved equations by computing the value that was inputed as zero (eg A=r^2*pi, if the A was inputted at zero, it would compute it from the radius...). He entered a number of these for me, and looking back nearly thirty years, I likely did some of this homework. :-)

I spent nearly an hour after school every day after the computer lab tour observing those programming on the teletype and (mostly) playing games. I got a printout of several games and played computer with them at home. With paper and pencil, following the flow of control and the update of the variable. My most significant one was a biorythms program. I actually did a complete run of this program by hand. The things I did because I did not have access to a compter. :-)

So I wonder how much of a mathematics basis is required to start programming. Can real programming be done without algebra, either previously learned or picked up through the actual programming?

As the subject says, those who started programming at the beginning of the pc revolution or thereabouts had tools that they could relatively easy extend the functionality of by programming, modern pcs cannot relatively easily be extended in functionality because they are so powerful already. The limited functionality of computers made extending them easier.

Furthermore someone starts to program and continues to do so in the way outlined here because they can achieve things they consider interesting. What do kids nowadays want to do with their computing devices and we can say what a programming language should make easy for them to do.

One thing is communication. I think a programming language to be 'easy' for a kid to learn nowadays should give them the instant response not so often of graphics moving back and forth because that is primitive and uninteresting in comparison to their video games, instead it should give them the possibility to automate messaging relatively easily.

I think in that respect Rebol is a relatively nice language for someone to learn to program in. But as it is mainly computer bound and not available on the tool most likely to be of wild interest for a kid and teenager to extend, the mobile phone, it is not the language likely to teach with.

I suppose python on the mobile is the most likely language to teach a teen to program in. maybe also a kid down to 9 years of age.

before that something on a game console, or in-game scripting.

From SourceForge.net:
"KidBASIC is an easy to use version of BASIC designed to teach young children the basics of computer programming. It has a built-in graphics mode which lets them draw pictures on screen in minutes, and a set of detailed, easy-to-follow tutorials that introduce programming concepts through fun exercises.

Version 0.3 eliminates the line-numbering syntax of previous versions, replacing it with labels. Performance has also been increased slightly. Linux source tarballs are now available.

Help and comments are always welcome. Check out our web site at http://kidbasic.sourceforge.net for more information."

I first looked at Rebol because it could be picked up so naturally by beginners - in my experience even more naturally than those old Basics - but it's much deeper and much more practical/useful for real work. None of the typically suggested language environments are small or simple enough to solve the problem of immediate use. Rebol's trivially small to download (100k-600k on most operating systems) and can be used immediately, without installing. Rebol runs identically on over 40 operating systems, and can be used to build serious applications with modern graphics, CGI interfaces, network functionality, database connectivity, etc... But it's absolutely the simplest language to begin using immediately, in a manner similar to those old Basic interpreters. I've never seen another package that's so quickly usable in so many ways, especially by beginners. There is not an easier way to build GUI's than with Rebol/View - simple interfaces can take as few as one line of code. It's a shame so few people even know it exists. Take a look at:

http://musiclessonz.com/rebol_tutorial.html

Rebol's built-in "help" function can be used to instantly determine the arity of any function (built-in or user-defined), and that potential problem is typically eliminated by adhering to even the simplest style guidelines ... obfuscated code can be created in any language by using unclear coding style. Rebol is no different in that regard.

In my experience, with beginners especially (not those indoctrinated and ingrained in modern coding practices), as this article is focused, Rebol seems to simply be more natural than other languages. The inclusion of so many useful native data types, native use of common Internet protocols, the single ubiquitous block data structure, super-simple GUI creation (with one line of code), and the way those elements all interact naturally without requiring any external modules or toolkits, and the way they can be simplified and extended at a higher level by the inherent dialecting ability of the Rebol language structure - those are features that are salient to this article's topic.

Professionals will continue to use the tools with which they've become accustomed. For others, Rebol is an amazing and powerful tool that's actually useful without months/years of experience. Like the author, it's my opinion that too many professionals in the industry miss the value of this point. Installing a modern C compiler and becoming familiar with the IDE interface is harder than learning to write and implement productive code in Rebol. The overhead that's required to understand, implement, and integrate object-oriented C++ libraries to accomplish any given programming task is significant for a beginner. And then to do web site programming with tools such as PHP, beginners need to learn a totally different development paradigm and language structure, and then they're confronted with databases and SQL, etc... beginners just don't know where to start. I think the main point that the author tried to make in this article is that there's too much overhead required to learn how to use typical modern computing tools, and that using them doesn't necessarily require or improve old-fashioned productive _algorithmic_ thought. Instead, modern programming has become about learning to implement the contrived and complex mechanics of multiple bloated environments. The idea is, wouldn't it be great if there was a single simple language/interpreter/compiler/environment that everyone learned to accomplish fundamental computing tasks, in a manner that's similar to the way those old BASIC interpreters were implemented - with a focus on algorithmic thought. Rebol seems to comes closer to that goal, in a realistic, simple, approachable, and useful way, than anything else I've seen.

Beside the language syntax, Rebol's interpreter file size is also dramatically smaller and easier to download/install (and available on more platforms) than that of any other powerful modern language. For that reason, and for all the others mentioned above, it just seems like a natural solution for the problem addressed in this article. It has been in my experience :) People can just pick it up and use it to do computing of all kinds. It's easier and simpler to use than any other language or development environment, especially when it comes to accomplishing practical, modern computing tasks (it's not limited to learning and completing simple tasks in the way most BASICs are).

We all have our reasons for using other favorite tools, and our preferences for coding syntax, environment, etc. I don't expect that to change, but for the topic of this article, Rebol seems perfectly suited. (... and I like Rebol syntax because it doesn't require so many unnecessary characters. Determining he arity of functions has never been a problem in my experience :).

My guess is there a lot more kids programming today, and a lot more young programmers than 20 years ago. And of course way more computer competence in general. In 'our' day the barrier to entry for computers was way higher, so naturally it was our ilk that was interested at all. In fact if you weren't interested in programming, there wasn't much to do other than watch the blinking cursor.

I agree it could be better, they could teach it more, etc... but my guess is 10 year olds 'like us' have no problem finding an outlet for the way they are bent. Certainly there are a lot more tools and tutorials at their fingertips than we had, and I bet ending up in the game industry sounds better to kids than ending up sorting customer records in cobol. That was as good as it looked where I was.

The F# programming language could be made into a platform to teach children programming in a graphical environment. Check out this demo.