From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.4 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_50,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,71d1fdde81c072f8 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Wes Groleau Subject: Re: Computer Programming for Everybody? Date: 1999/09/14 Message-ID: <37DE5CA1.22658433@ftw.rsc.raytheon.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 524989216 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <7rbkm4$pn6$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7rikv9$ibg3@ftp.kvaerner.com> <7rjceh$92t@dfw-ixnews15.ix.netcom.com> X-Accept-Language: en,es,fr,pt Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Complaints-To: news@icg.raytheon.com X-Trace: bos-service2.ext.raytheon.com 937319539 151.168.144.162 (Tue, 14 Sep 1999 09:32:19 CDT) Organization: Raytheon Company MIME-Version: 1.0 NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 09:32:19 CDT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1999-09-14T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: > Young students can learn to feel comfortable with computers and > software using some language that presents programming at the right > level of abstraction. Logo, Python, or Scheme might be just the > ticket for this kind of thing. Let the children learn through their > playthings. Today's elementary students will all (well, 95%) need to be comfortable with computers when they are adults. But only (wild guess) 60% will need to be programmers. So introduce some sort of computer applications from the beginning, but save the programming AT LEAST till ten years old. My nine-year-old son helped me write the PDL (i.e., semi-English design language) for an emulation of the TV game show "Wheel Of Fortune" but the process showed he wasn't quite ready for programming. (And he's bright enough to beat me at chess a year after I taught him the game.)