Re: LOGO-L> Logo/ToonTalk Textual/Visual

[bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey)]

"Ken Kahn" <KenKahn@ToonTalk.com> writes:
> I think visual/animated languages are more appealing to children
>and easier to learn.

IMHO the best solution to this problem is a hybrid system, in which
things that are easily expressed graphically can be, but also, anything
can be expressed textually.  Mike Eisenberg's SchemePaint is still the
best example of what I mean.  There are the standard paint program
point-and-click tools, but you can also write Scheme programs, and in
fact you can make new point-and-click tools by implementing them as
Scheme programs.

Microworlds is a decent attempt by the Logo community to build something
along these lines, although it's far from perfect.  (I am measuring
perfection right now only on the issue of the interchangeability of text
and graphics interfaces.)

Maybe ToonTalk is, too, since you say that it produces Java code.  If
the Java code isn't too convoluted (I haven't yet had a chance to play
with it -- I'll try to do that soon!) and if you can use Java code to
create new capabilities in the GUI, then I'll be pleased.

Btw, to say that concurrency is "natural" for people raises a lot of
questions for me.  Indeed, I believe that if you're simulating a world
of independent actors, it feels natural to program them separately.
But my CS students certainly don't find natural the synchronization
problems that arise if those actors want to share state!

(And finally, you and others have mentioned that different people have
different learning styles; part of mine happens to be that I don't really
want to make animations, and I'm more likely to want to know how many
combinations a Simplex lock has.  I guess I'm weird.  :-)



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