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There still Swift Playground, Safari JS console, not to mention old fashioned zsh/bash/ksh to tinker with. The part where the removal of the default macOS Pytho

by em500 7y ago

There still Swift Playground, Safari JS console, not to mention old fashioned zsh/bash/ksh to tinker with. The part where the removal of the default macOS Python/Ruby/perl (which don't even have autocompletion) kills her curiosity seems far fetched.

TimTheTinker 7y ago
What command-line programming language interpreters are left when those are removed? You have the shell itself, but that’s hardly enough to write anything cool. This feels the same as when Microsoft removed QBasic from Windows 98. So many kids at home missed opportunities to be exposed to programming from them on, until a certain Terminal application appeared in Mac OS X and began to pique young curiosity again (mine included).
- em500 7y ago
  > What command-line programming language interpreters are left when those are removed? zsh/bash/ksh93, tcsh, awk, sqlite3, elisp (assuming emacs survives for now) and javascript console. I don't know why you'd want to limit things to pre-installed command line interpreters though. > You have the shell itself, but that’s hardly enough to write anything cool. What kind of cool things do you envision the curious beginner to write, using only the current preinstalled Python/Ruby/perl, that they can't do with the remaining interpreters that I mentioned?
  - TimTheTinker 7y ago
    > What kind of cool things do you envision the curious beginner to write, using only the current preinstalled Python/Ruby/perl, that they can't do with the remaining interpreters that I mentioned? What about the iconic 4th grader "greetings and cool things" script? Here's something like what it looked like for me (on the IBM PC in my classroom): 5 CLS 7 RANDOMIZE TIMER 10 PRINT "Hello there. I'm a computer. What is your name?" 20 INPUT G$ 30 PRINT "Hello "+G$+". You are welcome to computer land." 40 PRINT "What would you like to do today?" 50 PRINT "1) Make noises" 60 PRINT "2) Make a maze" 70 PRINT "3) Exit" 80 PRINT "Enter your selection:" 100 INPUT S$ 110 IF S$="1" GOTO 200 120 IF S$="2" GOTO 300 130 IF S$="3" GOTO 400 140 PRINT "Try again." 150 GOTO 40 200 SOUND 20+(RND*20000), RND*3 210 GOTO 200 300 SCREEN 1 310 IF RND>.5 THEN PRINT "/"; ELSE PRINT "\"; 320 GOTO 310 400 PRINT "Bye." That kind of stuff is perfect for Ruby and Python. I don't envision kids getting that far with shell scripts, awk, sqlite3, or elisp. They might with HTML and JavaScript, but that requires learning HTML as well as JS and is sandboxed in the web browser; it's also not as "Cool! Look what I can make the computer do!" as messing around in the terminal. (Note, I’m glad BASIC isn't as available anymore -- we're not getting kids into certain bad programming habits early-on, like use of GOTO. But BASIC would still be more approachable than shell scripting, awk, etc.)
    - TimTheTinker 7y ago
      Another of my favorites -- this was fun in middle school (years 6-8) when I had a spare minute or two to sit down at a random computer (maybe in a computer lab). 10 SCREEN 9 20 CLS 30 COLOR 1, INT(RND*10) 40 SOUND 20+(RND*5000),.2 50 GOTO 30 The effect is rather striking, like someone must have really messed up the computer. My main gripe with Windows NT was that it would go back to the NT screen saver -- I couldn't get it to stay displaying my program, because there wasn't any true DOS mode.
      - em500 7y ago
        How would you do this on macOS with just the built-in Python or Ruby?
        TimTheTinker 7y ago
        I have no idea... I just wanted to share something fun I did around 25 years ago.
    - em500 7y ago
      clear echo "Hello there. I'm a computer. What's your name?" read G echo "Hello $G. You are welcome to computer land." while true do echo "" echo "What would you like to do today?" echo "1) Say something random" echo "2) Make a maze" echo "3) Exit" echo "Enter your selection" read S if [ "$S" = "1" ]; then say $( head -n $((7*RANDOM)) /usr/share/dict/words | tail -n 1 ) elif [ "$S" = "2" ]; then for i in {1..3000}; do if (($RANDOM>16384)); then printf '/'; else printf '\'; fi done elif [ "$S" = "3" ]; then echo "Bye." exit else echo "Try again." fi done This doesn't seem much different than the BASIC example to me. I think only the lack of GOTO in shell scripts makes this look slightly more complicated (requiring either putting all the statements in the if ... elif parts or defining functions). I honestly don't see how a Python or Ruby version would be much better than a shell version for this. Perhaps you can show by example?
      - 7y ago

by em500 7y ago

TimTheTinker 7y ago

What command-line programming language interpreters are left when those are removed? You have the shell itself, but that’s hardly enough to write anything cool. This feels the same as when Microsoft removed QBasic from Windows 98. So many kids at home missed opportunities to be exposed to programming from them on, until a certain Terminal application appeared in Mac OS X and began to pique young curiosity again (mine included).

em500 7y ago
> What command-line programming language interpreters are left when those are removed? zsh/bash/ksh93, tcsh, awk, sqlite3, elisp (assuming emacs survives for now) and javascript console. I don't know why you'd want to limit things to pre-installed command line interpreters though. > You have the shell itself, but that’s hardly enough to write anything cool. What kind of cool things do you envision the curious beginner to write, using only the current preinstalled Python/Ruby/perl, that they can't do with the remaining interpreters that I mentioned?
- TimTheTinker 7y ago
  > What kind of cool things do you envision the curious beginner to write, using only the current preinstalled Python/Ruby/perl, that they can't do with the remaining interpreters that I mentioned? What about the iconic 4th grader "greetings and cool things" script? Here's something like what it looked like for me (on the IBM PC in my classroom): 5 CLS 7 RANDOMIZE TIMER 10 PRINT "Hello there. I'm a computer. What is your name?" 20 INPUT G$ 30 PRINT "Hello "+G$+". You are welcome to computer land." 40 PRINT "What would you like to do today?" 50 PRINT "1) Make noises" 60 PRINT "2) Make a maze" 70 PRINT "3) Exit" 80 PRINT "Enter your selection:" 100 INPUT S$ 110 IF S$="1" GOTO 200 120 IF S$="2" GOTO 300 130 IF S$="3" GOTO 400 140 PRINT "Try again." 150 GOTO 40 200 SOUND 20+(RND*20000), RND*3 210 GOTO 200 300 SCREEN 1 310 IF RND>.5 THEN PRINT "/"; ELSE PRINT "\"; 320 GOTO 310 400 PRINT "Bye." That kind of stuff is perfect for Ruby and Python. I don't envision kids getting that far with shell scripts, awk, sqlite3, or elisp. They might with HTML and JavaScript, but that requires learning HTML as well as JS and is sandboxed in the web browser; it's also not as "Cool! Look what I can make the computer do!" as messing around in the terminal. (Note, I’m glad BASIC isn't as available anymore -- we're not getting kids into certain bad programming habits early-on, like use of GOTO. But BASIC would still be more approachable than shell scripting, awk, etc.)
  - TimTheTinker 7y ago
    Another of my favorites -- this was fun in middle school (years 6-8) when I had a spare minute or two to sit down at a random computer (maybe in a computer lab). 10 SCREEN 9 20 CLS 30 COLOR 1, INT(RND*10) 40 SOUND 20+(RND*5000),.2 50 GOTO 30 The effect is rather striking, like someone must have really messed up the computer. My main gripe with Windows NT was that it would go back to the NT screen saver -- I couldn't get it to stay displaying my program, because there wasn't any true DOS mode.
    - em500 7y ago
      How would you do this on macOS with just the built-in Python or Ruby?
      - TimTheTinker 7y ago
        I have no idea... I just wanted to share something fun I did around 25 years ago.
  - em500 7y ago
    clear echo "Hello there. I'm a computer. What's your name?" read G echo "Hello $G. You are welcome to computer land." while true do echo "" echo "What would you like to do today?" echo "1) Say something random" echo "2) Make a maze" echo "3) Exit" echo "Enter your selection" read S if [ "$S" = "1" ]; then say $( head -n $((7*RANDOM)) /usr/share/dict/words | tail -n 1 ) elif [ "$S" = "2" ]; then for i in {1..3000}; do if (($RANDOM>16384)); then printf '/'; else printf '\'; fi done elif [ "$S" = "3" ]; then echo "Bye." exit else echo "Try again." fi done This doesn't seem much different than the BASIC example to me. I think only the lack of GOTO in shell scripts makes this look slightly more complicated (requiring either putting all the statements in the if ... elif parts or defining functions). I honestly don't see how a Python or Ruby version would be much better than a shell version for this. Perhaps you can show by example?
    - 7y ago