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As an example, a decade ago I taught art students how to code. They had Macintoshes. I had them download Emacs then taught them Emacs Lisp. As insane as that so
by trop 7y ago
As an example, a decade ago I taught art students how to code. They had Macintoshes. I had them download Emacs then taught them Emacs Lisp. As insane as that sounds, it was interactive, easy to install, and interesting. They were able to write programs in the REPL after the first class. I wouldn't have dared to have put them in front of XCode or some equivalent IDE.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mycall 7y agoWhy didn't you use MaxMSP or Processing?
- trop 7y agoA fair question. An easy answer is that I thought Lisp was pretty cool, and that the students were capable of it. And, pragmatically, I was experienced with it, unlike MaxMSP or Processing. But there was something philosophical: I liked the idea of introducing them to the feel of fundamental computer science, rather than a nice layer over computers for artists. (And what artists actually use those nice layers?) I wanted them to experience an open source ecosystem (unlike Max), and I felt that the Java-base of Procesing was off aesthetically -- too many layers over the machine. Thinking about the OP, I do wonder what it would have been like to teach coding-for-artists with Hypercard. One thing I love about Emacs Lisp is that it is only grudgingly visual. That it returns computers to something which sends output to a TTY. It gives people who have grown up with a GUI a vision of what computers were like before. I like that Emacs (and Lisp) are things with a history and touch on earlier eras of computer culture.