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Look I don't want to criticise but I've got to say, this is the sort of thing that got me into programming as a kid. "Hey kids ready to do some super exciting

Look I don't want to criticise but I've got to say, this is the sort of thing that got me into programming as a kid. "Hey kids ready to do some super exciting graphics with turtles in a computer program?" Nah. I had a computer class based on Logo that managed to make me bored and disinterested with stuff like this, despite me being crazy crazy crazy interested in computers. Then as I got older I actually did get into graphics and gamedev, but early on it nearly killed all interest for me. The best way to teach kids programming is by making sure the kids are engaged, whatever they enjoy doing.

boltefnovor 6y ago
Yeah logo and Perl are both boring as batshit and great ways to turn kids off.
- diggan 6y ago
  I think you got the wrong takeaway here. It's not about Logo and Perl specifically, it's about making sure that whatever you do, it's enjoyable for the kids. For some that's math, for others it's graphics, for others it's "hacking". Whatever works for one, isn't guaranteed to work for the others. Just as for some, Perl is pleasure, for others, Perl is pain.
  - gwd 6y ago
    And I didn't do anything like "teaching them perl". In fact, I think I may have actually used bash; and if I were doing it today I'd probably use python. The point was to have something that you could reasonably guess what it was doing from looking at it. You don't have to know anything about perl replace "A" with "E" and vice versa. And although I wouldn't call this exercise "fun", it's something that connects with a part of their life they understand. Nobody would actually write a script like this, but someone could totally write a function like this as part of a larger program, and have exactly the kind of "bug" that was displayed there; or, could be hacked in exactly the same way. Kids are sharp enough to know when a skill is going to be useful, even if it's not "fun".
    - reificator 6y ago
      > Kids are sharp enough to know when a skill is going to be useful, even if it's not "fun". Kids are also a lot less dependent on fun than people think. If they actually feel useful you'd be surprised what they're interested in doing that's not considered fun.
hhas01 6y ago
“I had a computer class based on Logo that managed to make me bored and disinterested with stuff like this” That’s not Logo, that’s the teaching. The whole point of Logo is that it should be 99% self-taught. The teacher’s job is to teach the bits that aren’t naturally discoverable (see my three steps above), and to offer hints and nudges towards rich new areas for exploration should they bog themselves down in old, crude inefficiencies and repetitions. Bad Logo teaching is making kids memorize what all the buttons are called and what each one does when you push it, of setting “problems” that have one right answer which the student must return or is penalized for being wrong. Yes the “turtle” was limited, and if all you ever did was draw “turtle graphics” with it then, yeah, you’d quickly grow bored. But being limited to turtle drawing only was a limitation of the hardware and software of Papert’s time, plus the inability of most adults—particularly those in charge of the purse strings—to see the need to expand that platform to provide other opportunities as well. That damned turtle should’ve been just the first of a myriad of Logo “expansion packs”, but those damned grown-ups couldn’t see that because they lacked the imagination to do so. (Though if they had, they’d have been terrified by the thought: creating kids who think for themselves and can run circles around them—inconceivable!) Because all those adults saw Logo as was just another hoop to teach students to mechanistically jump through in rote-taught lessons before putting it away and moving onto teaching the next hoop, not as an open-ended user-led tool to be put in the hands of the kids so that they can explore and experiment and teach themselves while pursuing whatever it is that is of interest to them. That’s the worst thing about authoritarians: all they ever want to do is to make more of the same.
- reificator 6y ago
  > That’s not Logo, that’s the teaching. No, it's logo, because we were taught in exactly the manner you describe, to the letter. In fact I might have enjoyed it more if there were more structure. I hated art class as a kid, and turning computer lab into art class was not something I was ready for back then. At the time I was laser focused on wanting to learn to program, and I saw logo as something different than programming. You're using this as a weird segway to rant about authoritarians, but you're also telling me that there's a single way to teach kids programming that everyone needs to adhere to, and anyone who doesn't like it was taught wrong. Seems a bit tone deaf.

boltefnovor 6y ago

Yeah logo and Perl are both boring as batshit and great ways to turn kids off.

diggan 6y ago
I think you got the wrong takeaway here. It's not about Logo and Perl specifically, it's about making sure that whatever you do, it's enjoyable for the kids. For some that's math, for others it's graphics, for others it's "hacking". Whatever works for one, isn't guaranteed to work for the others. Just as for some, Perl is pleasure, for others, Perl is pain.
- gwd 6y ago
  And I didn't do anything like "teaching them perl". In fact, I think I may have actually used bash; and if I were doing it today I'd probably use python. The point was to have something that you could reasonably guess what it was doing from looking at it. You don't have to know anything about perl replace "A" with "E" and vice versa. And although I wouldn't call this exercise "fun", it's something that connects with a part of their life they understand. Nobody would actually write a script like this, but someone could totally write a function like this as part of a larger program, and have exactly the kind of "bug" that was displayed there; or, could be hacked in exactly the same way. Kids are sharp enough to know when a skill is going to be useful, even if it's not "fun".
  - reificator 6y ago
    > Kids are sharp enough to know when a skill is going to be useful, even if it's not "fun". Kids are also a lot less dependent on fun than people think. If they actually feel useful you'd be surprised what they're interested in doing that's not considered fun.

hhas01 6y ago

“I had a computer class based on Logo that managed to make me bored and disinterested with stuff like this” That’s not Logo, that’s the teaching. The whole point of Logo is that it should be 99% self-taught. The teacher’s job is to teach the bits that aren’t naturally discoverable (see my three steps above), and to offer hints and nudges towards rich new areas for exploration should they bog themselves down in old, crude inefficiencies and repetitions. Bad Logo teaching is making kids memorize what all the buttons are called and what each one does when you push it, of setting “problems” that have one right answer which the student must return or is penalized for being wrong. Yes the “turtle” was limited, and if all you ever did was draw “turtle graphics” with it then, yeah, you’d quickly grow bored. But being limited to turtle drawing only was a limitation of the hardware and software of Papert’s time, plus the inability of most adults—particularly those in charge of the purse strings—to see the need to expand that platform to provide other opportunities as well. That damned turtle should’ve been just the first of a myriad of Logo “expansion packs”, but those damned grown-ups couldn’t see that because they lacked the imagination to do so. (Though if they had, they’d have been terrified by the thought: creating kids who think for themselves and can run circles around them—inconceivable!) Because all those adults saw Logo as was just another hoop to teach students to mechanistically jump through in rote-taught lessons before putting it away and moving onto teaching the next hoop, not as an open-ended user-led tool to be put in the hands of the kids so that they can explore and experiment and teach themselves while pursuing whatever it is that is of interest to them. That’s the worst thing about authoritarians: all they ever want to do is to make more of the same.

reificator 6y ago
> That’s not Logo, that’s the teaching. No, it's logo, because we were taught in exactly the manner you describe, to the letter. In fact I might have enjoyed it more if there were more structure. I hated art class as a kid, and turning computer lab into art class was not something I was ready for back then. At the time I was laser focused on wanting to learn to program, and I saw logo as something different than programming. You're using this as a weird segway to rant about authoritarians, but you're also telling me that there's a single way to teach kids programming that everyone needs to adhere to, and anyone who doesn't like it was taught wrong. Seems a bit tone deaf.