Hacker News Reader

Comment by spraak | Hacker News Reader

I am not (yet) familiar with this app, but I do like to suggest to any new (young or old) programmers to give Racket along with the book 'Realm of Racket' a try. It's a simple enough programming language to get a good foundation with important principles, but also can take you nearly as far as you want.

Edit: For those who downvoted my comment here, I'd really be curious to know why.

View on HN

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think starting out with parenthesis based programming language is the best starting point for new programmers. You'll probably just scare them. I'm saying this with my huge love for Scheme. Of course, if you're already programming and want to learn/try something different, Haskell or Racket, or any other functional language is a great option.

What makes Swift Playground so compelling is that it seems to be specifically tailored towards new programmers, with the way it teaches -- it provides basic information about Swift, and does not overload information at the reader at once. And even existing programmers can make use of it because it's just a Swift playground (part of Xcode) underneath.

I think Swift Playground is genuinely fun as you can manipulate an object on an iPad. It's pretty much like playing a game in that sense. That's something you just can't get out of reading a book. It makes it that much more approachable.

If you show kids or even new programmers Swift Playgrounds along with something like Learn You a Haskell or Realm of Racket, or even tell them about Scratch, which do you think they would gravitate towards more?

Hm, again I haven't tried it - I don't have an iOS device that can run it - does it actually use Swift syntax? This is only anecdotal (anecdata) but both my friend and partner (both 27) are learning to program for the first time using Racket, who both barely know what a 'web browser' is and they're both finding it really easy to pick up, and even have started 'thinking in lists'. It also was my first programming language..

But anyways, I'm excited to give this app a try - I'm always glad to see more tools to help people get started.

I wasn't really directing all of what I said to you, but just commenting about Playgrounds versus other resources in general.

And yes, it uses real Swift syntax which is its main goal, according to the "Platforms State of the Union"[1] talk at WWDC this year.

[1]: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2016/102/

Very cool, thanks for explaining :)

In my experience, people expect programming languages to look different than human languages (and maybe more like math) and thus aren't put off by whatever structure the one they're learning takes.

It's after people have gotten used to a few languages that they start to develop syntactic prejudices, for example against "parenthesis languages" if they've been doing a lot of coding in C-family languages.

...or you could learn Swift and ship real apps. You'll have something to show your friends and family. You'll go much farther once you ship real software that does something that's interesting to you.

Um, are you trying to say that you can't make some 'real' with Racket? That you can't do something interesting with Racket? Because that's really not true, and you sound really snobby.

Um, no, ... that's not what i'm saying. Snobby is thinking that you need to learn computer science concepts first. I'm saying that excitement is the most important thing. 30+ years ago, i got excited by typing hex codes in for C64 assembler games. Next i learned 6502 assembler from magazines and books so i could move sprites across the screen, etc

Playing with Swift on an ipad is a lot of fun.

Snobby or not, there's something really great about being able to make an app that has an icon on your phone. Easy to show friends, and it feels somewhat tangible. And practical experience.

As a total noob programmer myself, stuff that exists only on the command line is a bit of a let down.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com