[wellylug] Beginner programming languages and environments for linux

[Pete Black]

I think a good way to learn programming is to use a spreadsheet with 
macro capabilities.

In this way you can see the data you are manipulating in a grid in 
front of you, and visually see the results of execution, and the chaos 
caused by bugs in your program - rather than being forced to 'imagine' 
your data structures.

SIAG (Scheme in a Grid) might be an interesting tool if you are 
interested in Jes's suggestion to use scheme, but personally I think 
the VB-derived macro language in OpenOffice is probably a reasonable 
place to start, and I would even take a step into heretic-ville and say 
that MS Excel is pretty good for this as the documentation for VBA is 
excellent.

Applescript is also quite a good way to start out, as is Javascript - 
the browser-environment and huge amount of online resource make it easy 
to do useful things and share them with friends via the web.

I would definitely put a focus on languages/tools that make it easy to 
provide visual or sound feedback (LOGO, as Grant suggested is a good 
one here) since keeping kids interested and motivated tends to be 
easier if you can tap into their urge to be creative. It's going to be 
hard to have an 8 year old get excited over coding a device driver, but 
if they can create complex patterns programmatically that exceed their 
technical ability with pens/paper - they'll tend to get a real 
appreciation for the power a computer can give them.

While directly programming sound stuff is usually 'harder' than 
graphics - a modular synthesizer where you can string together 
graphical blocks representing oscillators, wave-sources and 
note-sequences, or even a drum machine where you program it to play 
sounds within the context of time  might spark off something in your 
kids head that  you never even knew was a interesting to them.

Its hard for me, not having kids to really pitch anything at a level 
that I know will be interesting or approachable enough to an 8 year old 
-  but I know my interest in computing has always been with regard to 
graphics/sound - I remember the day I saw the mandelbrot set (the 
worlds most famous fractal image) displayed on an Amiga at a computer 
show in Auckland when I was quite young and that set me off on a quest 
to learn how to compute and draw such images on my computer.

The mathematics was always somewhat opaque to me but the concept I 
readily grasped - succeeding in overcoming the challenge of learning 
how to break the concept that my brain intuitively understood into the 
formal mathematics (imaginary numbers are not something you encounter 
in math texts aimed at kids) and then to make my computer render it in 
pixels was a real acheivement for me at that time.

Hope that helps

-Pete




On 23/07/2005, at 11:48 PM, Martin Bähr wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 23, 2005 at 04:57:07PM +1200, Rob Giltrap wrote:
>> Many Australian schools use BlueJ as an IDE for teaching intermediate
>> age and up to develop Java programs. It's purpose built for people new
>> to programming.
>> http://www.bluej.org/about/what.html
>
> doesn't look like it is suitable for children.
> java in general is not suitable for beginners.
>
> universities teach java because the industry demands it,
> not because they think it is good for teaching beginners.
>
> greetings, martin.
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