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Comment by sriku | Hacker News Reader

I've been frustrated by the magnified expectations of kids w.r.t. programming because they play sophisticated games compared to the pong/bricks/tetris of my highschool days. Very hard to satisfy my kids with doing, say, turtle graphics. I'm yet to try Minecraft programming (need windows machine) but that might do it for them as they're into Minecraft.

I had a blip of a realization one day when idly talking to the 6yr old with a prolog terminal at hand. Documented that here - http://sriku.org/blog/2019/07/16/prolog-is-magic/

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That's awesome! Not sure I've ever seen such a compelling demo that started from nothing.

In general I think starting from nothing is the original sin of programming pedagogy. I think it's easier to learn by example, imitation, and extension and then learn the deeper principles once you need them.

My wish is a game that would be compelling enough to get a few app store downloads but allows for live editing of the source. Say a soccer game where you can start by changing configuration options like the ball color, then maybe you can find where goals are added in and make yours count for more, eventually basic physics like changing acceleration.

Probably not for 6 year olds, but even at the college level I'm not sure about having students start by staring at an empty editor window.

> In general I think starting from nothing is the original sin of programming pedagogy

I think you're right in saying that. Back when I was in school, I learnt a lot by copying BASIC programs from mags and typing them in and then modifying them. I don't think I even acknowledge that early stage much now given that learning strategies have evolved from there.

edit: Thinking back to that, it seems to me that one of the attractive aspects of BASIC for interactive programming was line numbers. You could replace any line by typing a fresh line with the target line number instead of going back to edit the program. There's something innocent and simple about that.

I know this is naive but I have a lot of hope for Racket in this space. I'm just hoping it gets more institutional support for making educational tools with it.

The line numbers definitely help you imagine the computer mechanically reading and executing the lines. I wasn't taught with BASIC so in the few times I've had to modify a program with meaningful line numbers I have often used make or similar to just put them in for me. I'm glad someone likes them, I never understood why they existed!

Yes I share that hunch too and been trying it with the kids off and on.

The team's work with Bootstrap (https://www.bootstrapworld.org) is actually pretty awesome .. where they're trying to accommodate even kids who may not have access to a computer. One of the best CS educational efforts I've come across. Check out racketcon2020 ( https://con.racket-lang.org/) where Kathi Fisler (co-founder of Bootstrapworld) is keynoting on "data centric computing".

Well there you go, I think I have an idea and someone is 10 steps ahead of me! Glad to see it!

Racket is a fantastic language! If I may ask, what are you looking for? In your previous comment you alluded to live-reloading and graphics; both of which are possible but a little clunky at the moment.

The features are certainly there in Racket, clunky or otherwise! Plus this seems to be in the spirit of the language.

I think what's left is building it more or less. Also structuring the code for education. For instance keeping the complicated, scary code out of files that will be modified early.

Just putting this out there: You don't need a windows machine. Minecraft, including programming mods like ComputerCraft run fine on Ubuntu (and therefore probably on a lot of other distros).

"Java Edition" is, assuming the system can run "modern" games decently well.

I've also heard good things about "ro blocks", but having watched a stream or two I'm less sure of it as a good introduction.

Computercraft turtles and LUA aren't terrible, but when I see a FOR loop I think C style, while LUAs is the other kind and I'd really love for that for to be named something like ITER instead.

I think you mean Roblox.

I was considering this initially - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/code-minecraft... - but ComputerCraft (& ComputerCraftEdu) look like a lot more fun. Thanks!

Well I never heard of MakeCode, but I can say that I really liked ComputerCraft, especially because it does not try so hard to be educational. Instead it just adds to the gameplay. Quite fund indeed!

(I would recommend playing a bigger modpack where ComputerCraft is included)

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