4 ms·

He makes a good point. I once tried teaching my two teen-age kids Python. I was surprised to discover that before we could get into any Python I had to explain

He makes a good point. I once tried teaching my two teen-age kids Python. I was surprised to discover that before we could get into any Python I had to explain all kinds of things I took for granted (or, perhaps I don't remember how I learned them) - what is terminal (this is OSX), what is the command line, why it's called "shell" and what is the kernel, what is the current directory, what are text files, how to edit them, why there is vi, vim and emacs, etc, etc. All in all it's many many hours of explanation of the environment which you need to understand before you can do any programming. We spent a couple of weeks on this stuff, got to some basic Python and then the summer was over :( It's especially curious that one of these kids took a class in high school called "Computer Science" and they were using Java as the learning language. Somehow they managed to write programs that performed cool animations without knowing what the command line is.

Liru 11y ago
I recall my high school computer science courses. They consisted of us writing stuff in DrJava, using a framework our teacher made to abstract some Java-specific things away. We ran the programs we made within it, without going into the command line. It was quite a simple IDE, but it allowed us to get things done without using a command line.
Terr_ 11y ago
Nowadays I'd say "just use IDLE". P.S.: Granted, it's not always going to be the best tool as a project grows, but it drastically lowers the barrier to one-off experiments and lessons.
distrill 11y ago
I'm in my fourth year of a computer science degree, and there are students graduating with me in a few months who have never written code outside of eclipse. They've even had us 'deploy' a website with filezilla. It obviously works well enough for the size of projects we were dealing with, but I can't help but be a little put off by how unfamiliar/uncomfortable most people (in most of my classes) are with the command line.
- gtrubetskoy 11y ago
  Very curious - what is the name of the school you're attending?
iak8god 11y ago
> before we could get into any Python I had to explain all kinds of things I took for granted ... It's possible to start writing Python without really knowing any of the things you list with an IDE like PyCharm -- which is probably a similar environment to the one they used for Java in "Computer Science."
- gozo 11y ago
  It still too tricky to do things that make people, that don't know much about computers, excited about programming. Things like the C64, DOS or Qbasic were much "simpler" and of course the expectations were already lower. I would recommend something like Scratch or Processing instead.
  - distrill 11y ago
    Admittedly I didn't cut my teeth with C64 or DOS, but I have to imagine that it was only simpler because the barrier to entry was so much higher for those machines than it is today. And I would argue that expectations were higher in the past. Looking through some older 'entry level' computer science textbooks recently, I've been amazed at how complicated the material is and how quickly it covers things that we've only begun discussing as I'm about to graduate.
    - djbf 11y ago
      In those days, we also had magazines like Byte, Family Computing, Enter, etc. that included sections of type-in programs. My mom and I spent years doing that together!
nostrademons 11y ago
Java (along with XCode) is unique in that there are nicely-packaged IDEs that let you do professional-level coding just by downloading one program. My first professional experience was in Java. I worked for a year for a startup, working on 3-4 different programs and doing the entire UI for their product. After 2 days trying to compile things with Notepad, one of the other devs suggested "Go use JBuilder, we have a site license", and I never looked back. I didn't have to touch the command-line once. I would hit "Run program" and my program would run. I'd select "Add library JAR" by right-clicking on the project file and selecting the library. I could check out files from the VCS with the SourceSafe plugin just by right-clicking on a file and selecting a menu item. Then I got to college, and, as some unpaid volunteer work, tried to rewrite a quickly-growing Harry Potter fansite as a database-backed PHP webapp. And in the course of getting that to work, I had to learn all these crazy UNIX commands. I had to learn about CVS (this was before Subversion and git) and how its command-line worked. I had to learn vi, because that's what I had to edit files on the server. I had to learn how to unpack tarballs. I had to learn ssh and scp because our server-admin guy was like "No way in hell am I opening up telnet on this box." I had to learn Apache configs and PHP.ini and all sorts of other magic incantations. I'm really glad I learned them - my Linux & vim skills have actually aged better than my Java skills have, and I use vim & UNIX commands every day now. But damn, it was a lot of bullshit when I just wanted to get some text up on a website.
acbart 11y ago
That's why it's nice to have online systems like my BlockPy [1], or Skulpt/Pythy/CodeMirror. [1] http://blockpy.com http://blockpy.com
spion 11y ago
This is why I prefer Racket (and Dr Racket). It even comes with a great book: http://www.htdp.org/2003-09-26/Book/ http://www.htdp.org/2003-09-26/Book/ . Although I'm not really sure if the material / exercises there can really spark the imagination of a child, it is fairly accessible: unlike SICP, it doesn't assume knowledge of other advanced engineering and math topics.

Liru 11y ago

I recall my high school computer science courses. They consisted of us writing stuff in DrJava, using a framework our teacher made to abstract some Java-specific things away. We ran the programs we made within it, without going into the command line. It was quite a simple IDE, but it allowed us to get things done without using a command line.

Terr_ 11y ago

Nowadays I'd say "just use IDLE". P.S.: Granted, it's not always going to be the best tool as a project grows, but it drastically lowers the barrier to one-off experiments and lessons.

distrill 11y ago

I'm in my fourth year of a computer science degree, and there are students graduating with me in a few months who have never written code outside of eclipse. They've even had us 'deploy' a website with filezilla. It obviously works well enough for the size of projects we were dealing with, but I can't help but be a little put off by how unfamiliar/uncomfortable most people (in most of my classes) are with the command line.

gtrubetskoy 11y ago
Very curious - what is the name of the school you're attending?

iak8god 11y ago

> before we could get into any Python I had to explain all kinds of things I took for granted ... It's possible to start writing Python without really knowing any of the things you list with an IDE like PyCharm -- which is probably a similar environment to the one they used for Java in "Computer Science."

gozo 11y ago
It still too tricky to do things that make people, that don't know much about computers, excited about programming. Things like the C64, DOS or Qbasic were much "simpler" and of course the expectations were already lower. I would recommend something like Scratch or Processing instead.
- distrill 11y ago
  Admittedly I didn't cut my teeth with C64 or DOS, but I have to imagine that it was only simpler because the barrier to entry was so much higher for those machines than it is today. And I would argue that expectations were higher in the past. Looking through some older 'entry level' computer science textbooks recently, I've been amazed at how complicated the material is and how quickly it covers things that we've only begun discussing as I'm about to graduate.
  - djbf 11y ago
    In those days, we also had magazines like Byte, Family Computing, Enter, etc. that included sections of type-in programs. My mom and I spent years doing that together!

nostrademons 11y ago

Java (along with XCode) is unique in that there are nicely-packaged IDEs that let you do professional-level coding just by downloading one program. My first professional experience was in Java. I worked for a year for a startup, working on 3-4 different programs and doing the entire UI for their product. After 2 days trying to compile things with Notepad, one of the other devs suggested "Go use JBuilder, we have a site license", and I never looked back. I didn't have to touch the command-line once. I would hit "Run program" and my program would run. I'd select "Add library JAR" by right-clicking on the project file and selecting the library. I could check out files from the VCS with the SourceSafe plugin just by right-clicking on a file and selecting a menu item. Then I got to college, and, as some unpaid volunteer work, tried to rewrite a quickly-growing Harry Potter fansite as a database-backed PHP webapp. And in the course of getting that to work, I had to learn all these crazy UNIX commands. I had to learn about CVS (this was before Subversion and git) and how its command-line worked. I had to learn vi, because that's what I had to edit files on the server. I had to learn how to unpack tarballs. I had to learn ssh and scp because our server-admin guy was like "No way in hell am I opening up telnet on this box." I had to learn Apache configs and PHP.ini and all sorts of other magic incantations. I'm really glad I learned them - my Linux & vim skills have actually aged better than my Java skills have, and I use vim & UNIX commands every day now. But damn, it was a lot of bullshit when I just wanted to get some text up on a website.

acbart 11y ago

That's why it's nice to have online systems like my BlockPy [1], or Skulpt/Pythy/CodeMirror. [1] http://blockpy.com http://blockpy.com

spion 11y ago

This is why I prefer Racket (and Dr Racket). It even comes with a great book: http://www.htdp.org/2003-09-26/Book/ http://www.htdp.org/2003-09-26/Book/ . Although I'm not really sure if the material / exercises there can really spark the imagination of a child, it is fairly accessible: unlike SICP, it doesn't assume knowledge of other advanced engineering and math topics.