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I started my professional life as a stockbroker and I remember my mentor saying "Money Magazine does not exist to advise individuals to make great trading decis
by crikli 9y ago
I started my professional life as a stockbroker and I remember my mentor saying "Money Magazine does not exist to advise individuals to make great trading decisions, it exists to sell copies of Money Magazine."
I've since applied this logic fairly universally and I'm going to apply it here: SpriteBox does not exist to teach kids to be great coders, it exists to sell copies of SpriteBox.
The challenge of text undoubtedly is a blocker to the sales of SpriteBox.
I do not believe that it is a blocker to a kid becoming a great coder.
Coding absolutely requires a high level of comfort with abstraction. It requires the ability to mentally model abstractions, maintain relationships between abstractions, and make a (sorta) concrete reality of those abstractions.
Coders must be able to make intuitive mental leaps based on disparate and distributed data. Often the solutions that coders come up with are based on little bits and pieces of the puzzle based on SO answers, documentation, blog posts, example code found on github, etc. The solutions to tough problems are rarely found in a single neat all-explaining resource.
So... if a kid is having trouble with text I would candidly posit that the kid may not have the ability to deal with abstraction that coding requires. Not a problem for the industry as there are already enough coders who have this issue, but it creates a sales problem for SpriteBox.
EDIT: typo, clarity
- hasenj 9y agoThis. But also the problem with the OP is they seem to show people samples of a programming language without any explanation, expecting them to intuitively figure out the syntax and semantics. There's no way this won't be confusing.
- TazeTSchnitzel 9y agoAs someone who's grown up with computers, I think the biggest difference I see between ”technical” and “non-technical” people is a willingness to try things out and not be put off by intimidating new things. If you are willing to explore you will eventually figure it out, but if you are afraid you'll never get anywhere.
- dyarosla 9y agoOP here. You're right that SpriteBox does not exist to teach kids to be great coders. It exists to get as many kids as possible engaged with what programming is and excited to learn more. Especially kids who may not be 'naturally inclined' to code. What makes your argument fall flat is, we already had LightBot: it teaches kids to program with icons only. If text was a blocker for SpriteBox, why would we pursue it at all? You end by saying that kids who fear text are not well suited for coding. That's like saying kids who fear symbols are not well suited to math. This kind of sentiment is what drives people to believe that they should give up things that they may excel at given enough time and interest. SpriteBox, like many coding apps, is about sparking that interest. As for text, the real reason we tackle that is because there's a real gap for people between icons and textual programming: some people have this disconnect between what they perceive coding is. Is visual coding "real"? Are formulas in excel "coding"? These are answers programmers can answer, but not people unfamiliar with code.
- dwaltrip 9y ago> So... if a kid is having trouble with text I would candidly posit that the kid may not have the ability to deal with abstraction that coding requires. You do realize SpriteBox is targeting kids in lower elementary school? Regardless, you didn't really identify any flaws in the primary thesis: decoupling the process of learning how to write error-free syntax (with raw text) from the more important development of an actual understanding of the underlying fundamental concepts may provide better results in many cases, perhaps especially so with younger kids.