Friam

Fwd: A New Programming Book and a Holiday Wish - Google Groups

Classic

List

Threaded

3 messages Options

Owen Densmore

Fwd: A New Programming Book and a Holiday Wish - Google Groups

Administrator

Re: Fwd: A New Programming Book and a Holiday Wish - Google Groups

I am a fan of block based programming languages for younger students. And yes I think the transition from TNG to Netlogo is pretty straightforward and painless…

The biggest advantage I see in block languages, and this may seem minor but I can tell you from experience it isn’t, block based languages let you program before you are a consistent speller because it doesn’t matter how you spell W0lF or RaBbit, once you have declared the variable or procedure new blocks are created for you with that spelling…

Helps with understanding program flow as well as blocks clearly belong to other blocks in a way that {} and () (or indenting) just don’t.

With TNG there is a middle place where once you are proficient with the language you can begin to type the blocks into existence which is a lot faster than searching through ‘drawers’ of blocks.

—joshua

On Dec 18, 2013, at 12:05 PM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

More from the pencil code author:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/coffeescript/EFwDMClKKh0
.. about the effectiveness of Blockly .. like StarLogo TNG.

So here's the question: if I learn in blockly-style programming, will it impede the jump to text based programming?

Steve tells me that the super computer challenge uses TNG for the younger students, and text based NetLogo for older students. Does anyone have an opinion or experience, especially on whether block programming is useful at all and if it is, is the transition difficult?

-- Owen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Arlo Barnes

Re: [WedTech] Fwd: A New Programming Book and a Holiday Wish - Google Groups

Agree with what Josh has said; it is nice to separate the concepts from technique (like readability) while also beginning to teach ideas like giving variables and functions descriptive rather than throwaway names.

Also, I think the process of reëxamining what you have experienced so far that has been presented as 'programming' is enough to ensure that you will not confuse the differences between, say, Netlogo and TNG. That is to say, it may be a problem to remember whether a mental rule for a parenthesis or the word 'if' or whatever belongs to the model you made in your head when you learned Lisp versus when you learned Python versus Javascript and so on, but typing and connecting blocks is different enough so that seeing one or the other will unavoidably remind you of what it was like to program in that context (if that makes sense).

The downside to block-like languages is that, because the underlying code is more complex than your average text language interpreter, sometimes it glitches or behaves unexpectedly - of course, you get this in typed language, but it is when you mistyped something or your model of how you expected something to work turns out to be inaccurate or imprecise.

But then, I am basing a lot of this upon watching other people rather than my own experience.

-Arlo James Barnes