Submitted by J.P. Tuttle (not verified) on February 10, 2008 - 19:45.
Figured I might want to chime in here...
I'm a freshman CS major in college; I started programming by teaching myself BASIC (yes, I know...) from books in my elementary school library. I remember that we actually did do some LOGO back then.
Personally, I think that the whole "[end]-user programming" movement began to die down once Microsoft Office came on the scene. Computer classes that previously involved programming and all sorts of other pieces of software now pretty much involve Office; yes, students need to learn productivity software, but not at the expense of other pieces of software and general computer knowledge (how to figure out how to use software and/or how to teach oneself software). One of the major hurdles to getting students interested in programming these days is how complex it is. Back when I was a kid, I could make cheesy little 2D games. Now everything's 3D -- not just do you need to know programming, but 3D math/physics, 3D modelling, possibly some AI... it's way too complicated to just pick up on your own.
Due to this, simpler programming environments are created (Squeak's eToys, Scratch, etc). Graphical programming languages aren't completely bad; however, they should have some underlying text-based code behind them -- eToys has this. They're great for students to start learning with, but you don't want to give them the impression that *all* programming involves draging-and-dropping blocks into sequences of statements. Also, HTML is *not* programming. It's HyperText *MARKUP* Language. (Just had to get that out...)
Personally, I think Ruby is a quite nice programming language. One thing that no decent programming langauge these days seems to have is the immensely easy-to-use graphics and keyboard/joystick input (aka what you need to make games) that QBasic on our family's old 486 had.
Just my two cents.
-- J.P. Tuttle
Computer Science and Product Design & Innovation student at RPI
Programming
Submitted by J.P. Tuttle (not verified) on February 10, 2008 - 19:45.
Figured I might want to chime in here...
I'm a freshman CS major in college; I started programming by teaching myself BASIC (yes, I know...) from books in my elementary school library. I remember that we actually did do some LOGO back then.
Personally, I think that the whole "[end]-user programming" movement began to die down once Microsoft Office came on the scene. Computer classes that previously involved programming and all sorts of other pieces of software now pretty much involve Office; yes, students need to learn productivity software, but not at the expense of other pieces of software and general computer knowledge (how to figure out how to use software and/or how to teach oneself software). One of the major hurdles to getting students interested in programming these days is how complex it is. Back when I was a kid, I could make cheesy little 2D games. Now everything's 3D -- not just do you need to know programming, but 3D math/physics, 3D modelling, possibly some AI... it's way too complicated to just pick up on your own.
Due to this, simpler programming environments are created (Squeak's eToys, Scratch, etc). Graphical programming languages aren't completely bad; however, they should have some underlying text-based code behind them -- eToys has this. They're great for students to start learning with, but you don't want to give them the impression that *all* programming involves draging-and-dropping blocks into sequences of statements. Also, HTML is *not* programming. It's HyperText *MARKUP* Language. (Just had to get that out...)
Personally, I think Ruby is a quite nice programming language. One thing that no decent programming langauge these days seems to have is the immensely easy-to-use graphics and keyboard/joystick input (aka what you need to make games) that QBasic on our family's old 486 had.
Just my two cents.
-- J.P. Tuttle
Computer Science and Product Design & Innovation student at RPI