gailcarm

6 ms·

1.
by gailcarm 14y ago
I just noticed this comment. It does indeed help teach programming. I use it to start students off in understanding booleans, if statements, loops, and variables. It's very fast to get going and to experiment with visual results, and the
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by gailcarm 14y ago
I admit I get used to writing with the assumption that my readers know where I'm coming from. This is the first link that has ended up here (I didn't even know it for a while!), and it's a good reminder for me to ensure I work the context i
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by gailcarm 14y ago
Certainly a valid opinion. :) It's a good point that hiding the difficulty could cause problems later. But I would personally prefer to focus on the difficulty surrounding how to think when it comes to programming rather than issues with s
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by gailcarm 14y ago
Valid points. I wonder if stopping with a tool that does what you want or need is necessarily a bad thing? I personally hope we can get people into the more advanced stuff as well, but not everyone is getting a CS degree. So maybe it's ok
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by gailcarm 14y ago
To me it's more about how to hook people (especially non-traditional CS students) rather than ensuring they can continue using the tool later on, though that is a bonus. But on that thread, I don't doubt that Python can be useful even thou
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by gailcarm 14y ago
I actually wish we talked about LOGO more often. I personally don't have experience with it, and that's probably because it seems to be somewhat of a lost language. This post makes me want to see it make a comeback though: http://computin
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by gailcarm 14y ago
I don't entirely disagree, though I don't think that something needs to be difficult for the sake of it (I also don't think that's what you were saying). I happen to have a keen interest in teaching beginners about CS and programming, and k
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by gailcarm 14y ago
Good point about community. That's one of the things I really like about Scratch for the younger audiences (though I have also successfully used Scratch with adults as well!). Is there not much of a community with Python? I admit I haven't
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by gailcarm 14y ago
I sometimes worry about starting with such forgiving languages, but I suppose it really depends on the audience, and how well things are taught.
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by gailcarm 14y ago
I don't mind the tutorials myself since I have 10 years of experience (mix of undergrad, industry, and grad school), but I was trying to analyze the language from the perspective of a beginner. I figured it wasn't totally fair to see expla
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by gailcarm 14y ago
I actually am an experienced programmer - just not in Python yet. ;) I wrote the post from the perspective of someone with a keen interest in computer science education. My specialty is teaching beginners, whether it's a week-long course f