Comment by broken-kebab | Hacker News Reader

Comment by broken-kebab | Hacker News Reader

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I see what you mean, and I don't enjoy criticizing the initiative, but I volunteered as a programming teacher for several years, and my experience makes me believe you are on the wrong track completely. English has never been the major obstacle to teaching programming.

1. English is taught widely, and they need it anyway.

2. The lexicon to master is pretty short.

3. Kids naturally learn words. Say, with moderate interest in K-pop a European teen can remember Korean names, sometimes even in Korean script.

4. "For" in programming is not the same word as "for" in natural language. You may be under illusion that when it's in a local language, it will be easier to digest, but it's not. You need to explain its separate meaning anyway. And when you did it not in Programming English - sorry, you simply missed the opportunity. You spent roughly the same amount of time to create a redundant word-slot in student's memory.

5. "Tried" is not a valid metrics for success here. One could as well offer free cookies, and number of tries would be growing. But that elephant in the room will look at us without approval!

I agree that localization might not be the biggest hurdle, but that's also not the biggest selling point of the language. It's a gradual language (the syntax grows which each level), it's fun, and designed for classrooms so teachers can help kids easily. I disagree with you, because I think the localization does more good than bad. It's not like these kids are becoming "career hedy programmers". There are only a couple of levels, after which they will hopefully continue to learn other languages. I'm happy to agree to disagree.

My main struggle with BASIC at 10yo was its non-strict SQL-looking structure. Maybe that’s me specific, but this gradual thing would be even more confusing, cause it gives nothing rigid to pattern match against. The big part of it is demystification and regularity. I only started programming when I got Turbo Pascal (and god bless BGI). Before that it was all muddy waters.

I was very confused by the complex structure of Pascal (in Delphi). I think everyone has their own way of struggling with their first language.

I have doubts whether the gradual language is confusing or sensible to the average brain. Only time and competition in these kinds of educative tools will tell.

But, there is one thing I'm very sure of: the more kids that get to experience the joy of creatimg something by programming, and the more kids that get to experience the feedback loop, the better!

In Czech none of the keywords are localized. Seems like an unstable interface if language keywords change depending on the state of translation.

> 5. "Tried" is not a valid metrics for success here.

A key insight. Feels like the usual human confusion over activity and output. Activity metrics bias for participation / attention at the top end of the funnel, whereas Output metrics assess the end: the quality & quantity of production. The first is visible, immediate, plays to human bias, whereas the second is much farther off and usually less interesting to the general public.

Applied to kid coding, adults like seeing many kids doing work socially, whereas the few kids who stick with it aim for genuine, even selfish, creation.

It's not a bad initiative, just one that seems to cater mostly to the ideals of the teachers and the parents.

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