languages for learning programming
computing: software: programming: languages: for learning
Overview
There is a need for a programming language and environment that is suitable for teaching beginners – including children – to program.
Some key features:
- (Ideally) Available pre-installed on all popular OSs; next-best would be availability for free on the internet, in versions pre-compiled for all popular OSs
- BASIC-like in certain ways:
- must have an "interactive" mode, where you type a line and the computer immediately executes your instructions
- must have simple graphics ability readily available (where "readily" can be defined as "you can plot a pixel in a single line of code, where lines which include external libraries count as additional lines of code")
- simple, non-picky syntax (syntax error messages should be informative and on-target, to reduce the learning curve)
This need has been brought up in different contexts and discussed a fair amount; for now, I'm just going to post some links. --Woozle 21:27, 14 September 2006 (EDT)
Links
- 2003-10-14 Teaching Kids to Program by Joshua Marin
- 2005-2-20 Teaching My Kids to Program by Don Box
- discussion: lambda the ultimate
- 2006-09-14 Why Johnny can't code by David Brin
- discussion: |slashdot| |Contrary Brin|: the latter includes a suggestion to use Python in a particular configuration; perhaps this configuration could be preconfigured and packaged?
- Kid's Programming Language: free, but requires Microsoft Windows
- Commodore 64 emulator (eventually, create Commodore 64 emulators page and link with emulators)