7 ms·

I'm torn about all of these types of apps. On one hand, I think it's great to invite people into the world of coding and doing so in a user friendly matter. No

by fairpx 8y ago

I'm torn about all of these types of apps. On one hand, I think it's great to invite people into the world of coding and doing so in a user friendly matter. No doubt Grasshopper and a handful of similar apps are well designed, but is it really the right way to go about things? I remember vividly learning to code at age 11. I had an old computer, windows would constantly crash and the only thing I could access really was QBASIC. Alongside a book with code snippets, I would simply write a line of code, hit run and see what happens. Then, go back to the code and 'go rogue' (meaning: change the numbers a bit and make the line 5pixels instead of 2 for example). This is where the magic happened, because I actually coded something. It wasn't part of an educational application, it was the real deal inside the real editor with a real output. The learning always came from trial and error and in a way is very similar to how I still code things (when I'm not designing SaaS products for awesome B2B companies) The book might be replaced with Google & Stackoverflow, but the principles are the same. The magic of coding, I believe is in writing something that is real.

fearofpoets 8y ago
Great thoughts! I completely agree that learning to code is a lot about trial and error. One of key things that we decided to do with Grasshopper is make it possible for people to write real code, but on their phones. From the very beginning, it's possible for users to "go off the rails" and write code, run it, and see what happens. We didn't want to do fill-in-the-blank stuff, since there's only one right answer. We constrain the code editing environment to be relevant to the puzzle at hand, but that's mostly so we don't overwhelm beginners. We also have a Playground (available in the left-hand menu) where users can just play around using the Grasshopper coding environment. Would love to keep getting your feedback on how we can make everything more real and keep that magic. :)
dannyr 8y ago
Learning comes in different ways. Also, some people who want to learn how to code may be older and they can't travel back in time to code when they are 11.
- tzahola 8y ago
  So, older people can learn programming easier with... a cartoon grasshopper?
  - gowld 8y ago
    It's just a mascot. O'Reilly programming books have cartoon mascots too.
azhenley 8y ago
It is worth pointing out that your style of learning might be different than others', and gender has been found to be one such difference [1]. There are quite a few studies that have found tinkering to be done far more often by males, but is not necessarily more effective. [1] ftp://ftp.cs.orst.edu/pub/burnett/chi06-genderTinker.pdf
- paulcole 8y ago
  The myth of "learning styles" was discussed here pretty recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16810980 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16810980
  - azhenley 8y ago
    That is a very different thing. This is not "visual/auditory learning" styles, but what strategy do you use to figure something out.
    - fairpx 8y ago
      Actually the core of what I was trying to say is not about learning styles at all. You can use a real-world editor and a completely different learning style to create a real world application (by following along tutorials for example). The big difference, and that was the point I was trying to make, is that in a real code editor, you're learning while building in a real-world environment. Even if you stop in the middle of your journey, you will have built something that you can share with friends. Whereas these types of apps will take you through a journey which is great, but I wonder how many take the step of going to their computers, opening an editor and building their first real application.
  - gowld 8y ago
    The myth of the "myth of learning styles" is also discussed there. The 'debunked' "learning styles" was a very specific hypothesis about audio vs visual vs tactile modality, not a disproof that there are any differences in how people learn.
gowld 8y ago
> Alongside a book with code snippets, I would simply write a line of code, hit run and see what happens. Then, go back to the code and 'go rogue' (meaning: change the numbers a bit and make the line 5pixels instead of 2 for example). Grasshopper does pretty much this, but with a nicer UI and adapted to the constraints of a tiny phone screen. It gives you a code window and a graphics window and you get to write code and see what the code does. It's is a JavaScript environment which is modern-day web-world filler of BASIC's niche.
ryanisnan 8y ago
The magic of coding, especially early on, is in realizing that you, a user, can deterministically control a computer (like you stated in going rogue). This has nothing to do with writing something that is real, it has to do with cause, effect, action, reaction.
smogcutter 8y ago
I think it's an important signal that in every thread like this rather than say "wow, I wish I had something like grasshopper when I was a kid", we start waxing nostalgic about QBASIC. (I'm right there with you btw). A lot of us grew up learning with tools, not toys (except you, logowriter, you're cool). Then we went and made the tools totally unapproachable. So now kids get the opposite approach: toys, not tools. Teaching software like grasshopper is an experiment, and we're about to see the results. The first version of Scratch came out in 2003. Obviously this is super fuzzy, but for the sake of argument call 2003 the border between the QBASIC/getting a Sam's teach yourself C book at B&N era and the Scratch era. So a hypothetical 8 year old who started learning with scratch in 2003 is now 23 years old. The kids who grew up on this stuff are about to start showing up in adult life, and it'll be interesting to see how they turn out.
- infectoid 8y ago
  This would make a great AskHN. It would be interesting to know if anyone on HN in their early 20s or lower were first introduced to software development via scratch or some other means.
  - nitemice 8y ago
    I'm 24, so maybe a little old, but I was first introduce to programming with Game Maker. Later I did a little bit of Flash if you count that, and then moved onto Visual Basic.NET when I did 'Software Development' at high school. For a long time (since mid-primary school) I had been toying with HTML, mainly from a book from the local library, and by just looking at the source code of websites that interested me. I think it's clear that 'toys' like this, and like Game Maker, that make programming simple and user-friendly have been around for a long time, and don't necessarily stop people from learning more advanced concepts or languages, except if they lose interest. But even if they do, hoefully they will have packed up some skills that they can apply to other endeavours.
    - jmoss20 8y ago
      +1 for Game Maker, what an awesome educational tool. You could start with building blocks, Scratch style, then move over to code when you needed a little more power -- with a 1-1 relationship between lines of code and the blocks (IIRC), and the ability to run that code as "just another block". A wonderful gateway to the real stuff.
ashleyn 8y ago
I also started with Qbasic. I learned from the examples in the on-line help system. The first one I vividly recall running and changing was the CIRCLE example; probably the first code I ever wrote.
kot-behemoth 8y ago
I tend to agree with Bret Victor on this one (http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming): changing numbers randomly is a terrible way of learning programming. We can, and and should try and do better. The microwave analogy in the 'Read the Vocabulary' sections is very apt.
- fragmede 8y ago
  The app does! Or at least, instead starting off with a `drawRectangle` function that takes a full set of x-y coordinates and 3 numbers for RGB for fill color, it starts off with "drawBox(red)" (remember, this is an introduction to programming) and builds from there. Check out the user video someone else linked on this page!
everdev 8y ago
QBASIC age 11, same here. Haven't stopped learning or loving it :)
adrianmonk 8y ago
How far does it make sense to take this? Take it too far, and all tutorials are bad. IMHO there needs to be a balance between guided learning and self-directed exploration. Too little guidance and you can't get your bearings, causing you to get stuck and unable to cross what should be relatively minor hurdles. Too much guidance (or too little interest exploration) and you end up not really understanding why things are the way they are or what is possible beyond the very narrow range of things you've been taught.
- Jemmeh 8y ago
  Exactly. And the thing with old computers is they were kind of limited in scope because of hardware limitations. That in itself kind of gave you an idea of where to start because there wasn't much else on there. OP even mentions basically being stuck with QBasic. Now there's an endless field of where you could possibly start at. It's so useful to have some guidance of where to start. Imo it's also much faster. Yes I can trial and error figure out a way to fix my car, but why would I not use a manual?
taserian 8y ago
My experience with coding was using the old BASIC books (like the ones at https://www.atariarchives.org/ https://www.atariarchives.org/ ), and stubbornly typing my way to make these games work. When they didn't, I found it enormously satisfying to find out how to work around the problem being expressed in print; there were enough variations in BASICs for different machines that the listing for a TI 99/4A program wouldn't work in straight AppleSoft BASIC, for example. But the time between typing all the code and finding out if it worked was grueling. I'm not sure if the students of today would be satisfied with that large a report-back loop.

by fairpx 8y ago

fearofpoets 8y ago

Great thoughts! I completely agree that learning to code is a lot about trial and error. One of key things that we decided to do with Grasshopper is make it possible for people to write real code, but on their phones. From the very beginning, it's possible for users to "go off the rails" and write code, run it, and see what happens. We didn't want to do fill-in-the-blank stuff, since there's only one right answer. We constrain the code editing environment to be relevant to the puzzle at hand, but that's mostly so we don't overwhelm beginners. We also have a Playground (available in the left-hand menu) where users can just play around using the Grasshopper coding environment. Would love to keep getting your feedback on how we can make everything more real and keep that magic. :)

dannyr 8y ago

Learning comes in different ways. Also, some people who want to learn how to code may be older and they can't travel back in time to code when they are 11.

tzahola 8y ago
So, older people can learn programming easier with... a cartoon grasshopper?
- gowld 8y ago
  It's just a mascot. O'Reilly programming books have cartoon mascots too.

azhenley 8y ago

It is worth pointing out that your style of learning might be different than others', and gender has been found to be one such difference [1]. There are quite a few studies that have found tinkering to be done far more often by males, but is not necessarily more effective. [1] ftp://ftp.cs.orst.edu/pub/burnett/chi06-genderTinker.pdf

paulcole 8y ago
The myth of "learning styles" was discussed here pretty recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16810980 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16810980
- azhenley 8y ago
  That is a very different thing. This is not "visual/auditory learning" styles, but what strategy do you use to figure something out.
  - fairpx 8y ago
    Actually the core of what I was trying to say is not about learning styles at all. You can use a real-world editor and a completely different learning style to create a real world application (by following along tutorials for example). The big difference, and that was the point I was trying to make, is that in a real code editor, you're learning while building in a real-world environment. Even if you stop in the middle of your journey, you will have built something that you can share with friends. Whereas these types of apps will take you through a journey which is great, but I wonder how many take the step of going to their computers, opening an editor and building their first real application.
- gowld 8y ago
  The myth of the "myth of learning styles" is also discussed there. The 'debunked' "learning styles" was a very specific hypothesis about audio vs visual vs tactile modality, not a disproof that there are any differences in how people learn.

gowld 8y ago

> Alongside a book with code snippets, I would simply write a line of code, hit run and see what happens. Then, go back to the code and 'go rogue' (meaning: change the numbers a bit and make the line 5pixels instead of 2 for example). Grasshopper does pretty much this, but with a nicer UI and adapted to the constraints of a tiny phone screen. It gives you a code window and a graphics window and you get to write code and see what the code does. It's is a JavaScript environment which is modern-day web-world filler of BASIC's niche.

ryanisnan 8y ago

The magic of coding, especially early on, is in realizing that you, a user, can deterministically control a computer (like you stated in going rogue). This has nothing to do with writing something that is real, it has to do with cause, effect, action, reaction.

smogcutter 8y ago

I think it's an important signal that in every thread like this rather than say "wow, I wish I had something like grasshopper when I was a kid", we start waxing nostalgic about QBASIC. (I'm right there with you btw). A lot of us grew up learning with tools, not toys (except you, logowriter, you're cool). Then we went and made the tools totally unapproachable. So now kids get the opposite approach: toys, not tools. Teaching software like grasshopper is an experiment, and we're about to see the results. The first version of Scratch came out in 2003. Obviously this is super fuzzy, but for the sake of argument call 2003 the border between the QBASIC/getting a Sam's teach yourself C book at B&N era and the Scratch era. So a hypothetical 8 year old who started learning with scratch in 2003 is now 23 years old. The kids who grew up on this stuff are about to start showing up in adult life, and it'll be interesting to see how they turn out.

infectoid 8y ago
This would make a great AskHN. It would be interesting to know if anyone on HN in their early 20s or lower were first introduced to software development via scratch or some other means.
- nitemice 8y ago
  I'm 24, so maybe a little old, but I was first introduce to programming with Game Maker. Later I did a little bit of Flash if you count that, and then moved onto Visual Basic.NET when I did 'Software Development' at high school. For a long time (since mid-primary school) I had been toying with HTML, mainly from a book from the local library, and by just looking at the source code of websites that interested me. I think it's clear that 'toys' like this, and like Game Maker, that make programming simple and user-friendly have been around for a long time, and don't necessarily stop people from learning more advanced concepts or languages, except if they lose interest. But even if they do, hoefully they will have packed up some skills that they can apply to other endeavours.
  - jmoss20 8y ago
    +1 for Game Maker, what an awesome educational tool. You could start with building blocks, Scratch style, then move over to code when you needed a little more power -- with a 1-1 relationship between lines of code and the blocks (IIRC), and the ability to run that code as "just another block". A wonderful gateway to the real stuff.

ashleyn 8y ago

I also started with Qbasic. I learned from the examples in the on-line help system. The first one I vividly recall running and changing was the CIRCLE example; probably the first code I ever wrote.

kot-behemoth 8y ago

I tend to agree with Bret Victor on this one (http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming): changing numbers randomly is a terrible way of learning programming. We can, and and should try and do better. The microwave analogy in the 'Read the Vocabulary' sections is very apt.

fragmede 8y ago
The app does! Or at least, instead starting off with a `drawRectangle` function that takes a full set of x-y coordinates and 3 numbers for RGB for fill color, it starts off with "drawBox(red)" (remember, this is an introduction to programming) and builds from there. Check out the user video someone else linked on this page!

everdev 8y ago

QBASIC age 11, same here. Haven't stopped learning or loving it :)

adrianmonk 8y ago

How far does it make sense to take this? Take it too far, and all tutorials are bad. IMHO there needs to be a balance between guided learning and self-directed exploration. Too little guidance and you can't get your bearings, causing you to get stuck and unable to cross what should be relatively minor hurdles. Too much guidance (or too little interest exploration) and you end up not really understanding why things are the way they are or what is possible beyond the very narrow range of things you've been taught.

Jemmeh 8y ago
Exactly. And the thing with old computers is they were kind of limited in scope because of hardware limitations. That in itself kind of gave you an idea of where to start because there wasn't much else on there. OP even mentions basically being stuck with QBasic. Now there's an endless field of where you could possibly start at. It's so useful to have some guidance of where to start. Imo it's also much faster. Yes I can trial and error figure out a way to fix my car, but why would I not use a manual?

taserian 8y ago

My experience with coding was using the old BASIC books (like the ones at https://www.atariarchives.org/ https://www.atariarchives.org/ ), and stubbornly typing my way to make these games work. When they didn't, I found it enormously satisfying to find out how to work around the problem being expressed in print; there were enough variations in BASICs for different machines that the listing for a TI 99/4A program wouldn't work in straight AppleSoft BASIC, for example. But the time between typing all the code and finding out if it worked was grueling. I'm not sure if the students of today would be satisfied with that large a report-back loop.