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John Resig: Redefining the Introduction to Computer Science at Khan Academy

480 points by spicyj 14y ago

th0ma5 14y ago
He mentions the responsive design being really hard, and that was something I couldn't quite articulate to myself when I saw that talk a while ago... the ideas Bret Victor presented, only a handful of them are general purpose. I don't see how one could develop the timing examples he had, for instance, in a way that makes sense outside of his specific work on his 2D platform game.
dons 14y ago
Some similarities with Felleisen's work teaching programming to early high schoolers, - http://www.programbydesign.org/ http://www.programbydesign.org/ Those folks have tons of data on what works, what doesn't. I get a bit of a NIH feeling from this effort, that I hope is unfounded.
- lacerus 14y ago
  NIH = Not Invented Here, in case somebody else is wondering also.
  - jonahkagan 14y ago
    Ah, so not National Institutes of Health. Makes more sense now
    - shardling 14y ago
      It is pretty confusing -- maybe we should invent a new acronym for use on HN. >_>
- rabidsnail 14y ago
  Having everything run in the browser is a _huge_ win, because it allows students to share what they've made with their friends. Post to facebook "Look what I made", which includes the source and makes it easy for others to modify it and share that themselves. Viral loop!
  - soegaard 14y ago
    It is possible to use Scheme in the browser too: http://www.wescheme.org/
    - rabidsnail 14y ago
      Yes, but it's not possible to run Dr. Scheme in the browser. So there would still have to be a fair amount (ie almost all) of reinvention.
bpierre 14y ago
We are working on a similar project (programming education), but in a persistent and multiplayer environment. It’s more like a live game framework which allows to learn JavaScript, or just to have fun! Everything is programmable: the display of a bot (Canvas 2D Context API), the buttons used to to control it, the interactions between the bots, etc. https://github.com/bpierre/modul.io https://github.com/bpierre/modul.io
bazookaBen 14y ago
tried it. The greatest takeaway for me is being able to edit the code and see changes live.
look_lookatme 14y ago
This is cool and I think Javascript is a perfectly suitable first time language, but I don't think it's ideal. Too many ways of doing things, too many code organization and programming styles... it's going to be confusing for people moving beyond the courses. Still it's better than c++ or java.
- dpritchett 14y ago
  This could easily leverage CoffeeScript or even an education-oriented language that compiles to JS, but then the students wouldn't be able to immediately turn around and build real-world apps without additional cognitive overhead.
- phleet 14y ago
  Hey - I'm one of the interns that worked on this. I have my own reservations about JavaScript the language, but after seeing what John had built when I started, I believe that this is undoubtedly the right way to go. If we wanted to use another language to accomplish similar goals, the options would be: 1. Run the code on the server. This dramatically increases latency, introduces more security concerns and would dramatically increase our costs as this would inflate our server load dramatically. Really, its the latency here that makes this a no-go. As you use the number scrubber, it's re-executing several times a second, and that's just not going to work out with client-server communication (even with websockets). 2. Run a different language that compiles to JS and runs in the browser. As it stands, the overhead of doing this is also too much. It would be shipping a compiler or parser down to every client. CoffeeScript may be the most reasonable option there, but it has many of the same warts as JavaScript anyway. Any parser/compiler needed introduces an extra step in the pipeline and would inevitably reduce responsiveness. While JavaScript the language certainly has its problems, it's what it lets you do that counts here.
  - chromatic 14y ago
    Run a different language that compiles to JS and runs in the browser. As it stands, the overhead of doing this is also too much. Not at all--it takes some work, but especially if most programs are less than a few hundred lines long, the overhead is far less than you think!
sciurus 14y ago
Anyone have a cached copy? ejohn.org is returning a 500 error.
- iyerrag 14y ago
  http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://ejohn.org/blog/introducing-khan-cs/ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
msg 14y ago
Interesting. I have shown my son the Logo turtle, but hopefully this will make even more sense to him. I was looking for a way to expose him to Processing but unsure where to begin. It's obvious now. We are home schooling and always looking for new and interesting stuff to do with him. Thank you, John.
- archon 14y ago
  Thank you for being willing to teach your son programming. I was homeschooled with a programmer for a dad and I guess it just never occurred to him to teach me himself. I discovered programming on my own in late high school, but I would have loved it when I was younger.
  - rhizome 14y ago
    I had a similar experience with a programmer Dad, so you're not alone.
  - thaumasiotes 14y ago
    same
  - warfangle 14y ago
    I had a programmer dad, and was homeschooled. The first thing he did when I asked how I could cheat at the various qbasic games we had (a la game genie) was hand me a Learn Qbasic book. He said I'd know how to cheat once I finished working my way through the book. Eventually I did learn how to cheat, but got bored with it. So I made them harder ;) Sorry yours wasn't the same!
  - joelhooks 14y ago
    We homeschool, and I've always tried to present my kids with programming concepts. Scratch, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Squeak, and a few others. My oldest has shown intermittent interest, but he's had plenty of exposure. He will definitely be able to say "I started programming when I was 8" - and I assume that when/if he catches the bug, he will know where to look and what/who to ask.
workingbrains 14y ago
Useful site
jameshsi 14y ago
This is great. I volunteered at Maker's Faire earlier this year at the Scratch booth and a lot of parents were wondering what some possible next steps could be for their kids who were interested in learning more about programming. It felt a little weird suggesting Khan Academy videos, but with this project I think the transition to deeper CS concepts is a lot more seamless for those who are curious
crusso 14y ago
This is very exciting. I was just looking around this past weekend for a way to introduce my 10 and 13 year-olds to programming concepts. I want them to understand more about the computer than how to play warcraft, watch youtube videos of pandas, or even make slide presentations. My one daughter is going into 8th grade and has had a total of two half-semesters of "business and computer science" where the most they do is to play around with PowerPoint and Excel. Computers are so integral to every-day life now. It's positively disgraceful that every child shouldn't be educated on what they are, how they're built, how they work, how to program them, etc.
eranation 14y ago
Love it, Who is the presenter in the videos? the voice sound really similar to Vi Hart or is it just me?
- Encosia 14y ago
  Sal Khan and John Resig are narrating the video.
  - eranation 14y ago
    I know, I talk about the actual videos, e.g. this one http://www.khanacademy.org/cs/intro-to-drawing/848372201 http://www.khanacademy.org/cs/intro-to-drawing/848372201
    - jeresig 14y ago
      They are narrated by Jessica Liu (as mentioned in the blog post).
      - eranation 14y ago
        Thanks, she is doing an amazing job
- shardling 14y ago
  Well, Vi Hart works for Khan now.
- dbaupp 14y ago
  Vi Hart does work at Khan Academy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi_Hart#Khan_Academy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi_Hart#Khan_Academy
karpathy 14y ago
Don't miss the link to Bret Victor's lecture on responsive programming: http://vimeo.com/36579366 http://vimeo.com/36579366 . I found it to be very enjoyable and it further shows what is possible with this paradigm. [minutes 2-23 are most interesting and relevant]
- agentultra 14y ago
  While I enjoyed that video, it came to me as a bit of surprise that this style of programming is being "rediscovered." Anyone remember Morphic, Squeak, Lisp, etc? Emacs? Lively Kernel is pretty darn cool too. I'm not saying it's bad, I think it's cool that this style of programming is making a come back (and about bloody time I suppose). The only thing I'm not certain of with this course is actually calling it, "Computer Science." Perhaps that's because I tend to agree with those who question whether it is indeed a science at all. However after watching a few videos and trying some of the exercises it seems to me to be a great way to learn how to program.
- andyl 14y ago
  Does JReisig's work support the Bret Victor idea of selecting the line of code and highlighting the pixels that it draws?? (shown at 8:00 in the Bret Victor video)
powrtoch 14y ago
It's hard for me to imagine learning Javascript as your first programming language. It's always felt kind of crazy and bizarre to me (especially when you try to do anything requiring more than 20 lines of code), but I think a lot of that is just failure on my part to shake off the paradigms I'm used to. A generation of coders who are actually trained from the start to think in Javascript... almost scary honestly, but in a good way. We need more John Resigs pushing the web forward :-)
- majormajor 14y ago
  Javascript has its oddities for sure, but most of that lies in areas that you wouldn't need to touch while learning programming basics. Compared to my high school experience of learning in a C/C++ mismash with a teacher who insisted on introducing pointers very early, before ever presenting me with anything interesting to do which would make me want to figure out the details like that (and which scared me off programming for four years), I think it sounds like a dream.
  - slurgfest 14y ago
    Although I like Javascript and its tools have improved dramatically in the last few years, a number of cases (like [] + {} vs. {} + []) are decisively non-ideal for teaching people who are not somewhat versed in programming languages. It's this kind of thing which gave Javascript a reputation as a kind of client side PHP. I would be very happy if these kinds of irrationalities could be ironed out in a future version of the language, even if it meant backward incompatibility. If the language is thoroughly rationalized and there is a simple, beautiful API for graphics then I think it becomes the beginner's language to end all (since client-side web is such a nice platform to target). But for now, it isn't there... I'd be happy to hear that it was a priority. Perhaps something like Dart will pick up that quest.
    - hnherer 14y ago
      perfect!
    - Me1000 14y ago
crag 14y ago
Best part of the intro video: "Welcome. I'm super excited about computer science. it's my favoriate thing in the world... except for pot". QFT.
- rhc2104 14y ago
  I believe she says "pie", and not "pot".
  - crag 14y ago
    You sure about that? I heard pot. Maybe I just "wanted" to hear pot. I'll listen again.
    - UK-AL 14y ago
      I don't think it would be wise for a kids education site to reference pot.
      - crag 14y ago
        Ok ok.. I still hear "pot".. but that's probably my "New Yorker ears" tuning. You are right though; since it's aimed at high school, I doubt it's pot. ;(
        pitchups 14y ago
        If it sounds like "pot", doesn't matter if he really said "pie"; chances are many kids are going to hear "pot" too unfortunately.
  - dylanvee 14y ago
    Definitely pie. On Tau Day the Khan Academy office was graced with a wonderful tau (two pie).
daviddaviddavid 14y ago
This looks really great. One criticism is that this style of graphical programming is overwhelmingly of a mathematical bent. Granted it's quite basic arithmetic but still, you open a code sample and you're confronted with a bunch of numbers and mathematical expressions. My worry with this is that there are many, many youngsters out there who are intimidated by math but who would absolutely love to write code. This is especially worrisome since such a huge amount of coding involves no math at all.
- jeresig 14y ago
  In our experience thus far we've found that students are far less intimidated by the numbers/math when they're able to directly manipulate the results. When they can tweak the numbers with minimal ramifications and instantaneous feedback they can easily intuit what the numbers are attempting to do. Working with young kids we definitely found that they were comfortable in this environment even after minimal introduction.
jonahkagan 14y ago
Awesome stuff. John Resig, if you're in here, can you give any details on the challenges of instantly updating the Processing sketch? I can just wait for the blog post, but I'm really curious. Also, what components exactly are you planning to release open source? The other work in this area that I've been able to find is very tightly coupled to the rendering library (d3 or PJS). Is the Khan Academy system open to alternate rendering libraries?
- kinleyd 14y ago
  Yeah, real awesome stuff, John Resig! Your follow through on Bret Victor's 'Inventing on principle' is mind blowing. I'm getting my kids on it right away. Thank you.
thesash 14y ago
Learning tools like this would have saved my teachers a lot of headaches if they were available 10 years ago. As opposed to the classroom model of: [lecture -> assign work -> grade & return with static feedback], students can actually play with the subject matter during the lesson, instead of turning pens into projectiles or doodling in their books because they're bored to death (not that I know anything about that). Then they get immediate feedback, whether right or wrong, by seeing how the instructor would have solved the problem. That kind of hands on learning, where the student learns through their own trials and errors is much more fun than sitting through a lecture that has to accomodate the varied learning paces of a classroom of 20+ students. The video posted here unfortunately focuses on the live editing aspect of the app, but you can see the interactive lesson function more clearly in this early prototype video[1]. This kind of interactive learning is the same thing that Sebastian Thrun is working on at Udacity[2]. For all the promise of making university courses available for free online, I think this is the truly disruptive stuff going on in online education, because it's way beyond just filming lectures and throwing them online, it's a fundamental leap forward for education. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvaaude_1hk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvaaude_1hk [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75TP3hoPA8U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75TP3hoPA8U
- richcollins 14y ago
  play with the subject matter during the lesson Kind of removes the need for a "lesson" and teacher, in favor of a facilitator that can go around and help those learning to discover things they hadn't considered.
  - robryan 14y ago
    Sounds like what is happening in the lower year levels these days.
- barik 14y ago
  > Learning tools like this would have saved my teachers a lot of headaches if they were available 10 years ago. This type of teaching has a formal name. It's sometimes called course delivery reversal or course flipping, with the idea being that, essentially, the "lecture" is done outside of the class, and the "homework" is done within class. In this way, you can have a subject matter expert present at the time when he or she is actually needed. I've tried it in my own courses (recording in Camtasia and having students watch the lecture outside of class, where they can rewind, pause, etc.), then dedicating the entire class time to allow the students to actually work problems. More generally, active learning has been gaining popularity in the classroom.
rabidsnail 14y ago
Little nitpick: Why make the draw event handler a magic variable instead of a function which takes a function? Ie: var draw = function() { point(random(0, 400), random(0, 400)); }; as opposed to onDraw(function() { point(random(0, 400), random(0, 400)); }); AFAICT there aren't any other variables that side-effect based on what you've assigned to them.
- phleet 14y ago
  Granted this is certainly not JS best practices, but following best practices was not our goal here. Explaining variable assignment is much simple than explaining callbacks and/or higher order functions. On a more practical note, this is the convention that processing.js uses, and thats what we're using to render the canvas.
- pbreit 14y ago
  The former is much easier to understand.
VikingCoder 14y ago
I am done with all of you so-called "hands-on people" who don't give people real tools to use. The XO (One Laptop Per Child) and now this. Please stop giving people tinker-toy environments with tinker-toy problems that have nothing to do with the real world. If someone's not motivated to learn, yes, they may need this kind of hand-holding. But if someone genuinely wants to learn to program computers for a living, this is - in my opinion - not what they need at all. Drivers Education is taught in a real car, not in Mario Kart on a Wii. I'm sick of the Mario Kart version of computers being spoon-fed to otherwise intelligent people as though it has anything to do with reality. I learned to program using Turbo Pascal. I was not so far removed from reality that everything I learned was almost completely useless. I have not given this much attention yet, but so far, it feels completely useless. PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong.
- VikingCoder 14y ago
  "Reducing the complexity of getting started down to zero will result in more people learning." Yes, but you're removing NECESSARY complexity, in order for them to learn something barely worth learning. "I feel that purely textual coding environments (or coding environments that favor textual output over visual output) serve as a highly uninteresting introduction to programming." There are people who get to use non-textual coding environments, and there are people who get to work with very visual outputs. I feel that by giving them these tools, you've castrated their ability to understand anything meaningful. "Obviously, right now we’re not teaching very much in the way of traditional Computer Science content," Yeah, approximately none of it. "We decided that it was much more fruitful for us to tackle the most challenging problem that exists with Computer Science education first: Getting people excited about programming." Of the people who are AT ALL interested in learning about programming, I have encountered exactly zero of them who aren't already excited about it. Why do you think that GETTING them excited is the "most challenging problem"? I absolutely applaud the effort, and I sincerely wish you success. I just personally think you're doing it all wrong.
  - yusefnapora 14y ago
    > Of the people who are AT ALL interested in learning about programming, I have encountered exactly zero of them who aren't already excited about it. How is this tautology at all helpful? Of course the people who are excited about programming are excited about it. For every one of those, how many view computers as entertaining magic boxes? Most non-programmers I know regard programming as a kind of impenetrable dark art. There is such a monumental disconnect between "Hello World" and "I can do whatever I want!" that most people just assume that they'll never be able to achieve any meaningful result. Being able to create something visually interesting that you can share with your friends is a big motivator, and I think you're too quick to deride it. Also, I don't get why you view this as something "barely worth learning." The "real world" doesn't run on Turbo Pascal anymore, and Javascript, like it or not, is a big part of modern programming. Do you really think it will be so difficult to translate skills acquired generating interesting games into skills that can be used in a modern web shop? Anyway, you're welcome to your opinion, I just personally don't understand it. Luckily for people that share your opinion, there are plenty of traditional CS resources all over the web and elsewhere to learn programming in the "real world." For those whose "real world" consists of playing games and wondering how they work, this might just be the thing that motivates them to look under the hood.
johntb86 14y ago
I wonder if they've added any help for transitioning out of their sandbox. I know when I first learned programming, one problem I had was taking what I learned in the classroom on Apple IIs and transitioning to using GW-Basic or QBasic at home. Transitioning from a browser-based sandbox to editing HTML and real files would probably be even worse. It might be nice if there was an easy framework they would let people download to help them create things in a more normal environment, so they don't get stuck and give up at that point.
- schrijver 14y ago
  I very much agree… In fact a large part of learning to code is not much grab abstract principles as it is getting accustomed to the eco system: how code relies on other code, how it is organised on files, and how it gets uploaded to the internet. It would be great if this site provided the opportunity to download a set of html and js files that re-implement the result of the students… a great starting point also for a teacher to talk about these issues… and a way for students to walk outside the garden when they feel like it…
hanibash 14y ago
Probably like many others, I learned to program first by developing web applications. The mass of information and multiple moving pieces frustrated me almost to the point of quitting. There are probably many people who did quit when introduced to programming this way. This CS learning platform brings programming education back to its simple roots, back when your first program was as simple as drawing a circle in BASIC. It also leaps it forward, borrowing ideas from Bret Victors responsiveness talk was brilliant and I hope sets a precedent for programming education moving forward. I really admire what you've done, Mr. Resig and the Khan Academy team!
ilaksh 14y ago
This is massively badass. I think this may be the best tool out there for learning programming. One issue I am having here in Chrome in Ubuntu on my computer is that some of the videos are giving me minor playback problems where some visual features are not visible. For example, in the intro to drawing tutorial the rectangle seems to turn into a line because three of the sides are not visible. This is probably just what I get for using Linux though. Anyway, I was wondering: have Mr. Khan and the rest of them put any thought into how the new interactive programming environment might be applied to learning math or other concepts taught by Khan Academy besides Computer Science? Like specifically taking some of the math or other lessons and presenting applications to tweak that would demonstrate those concepts. Maybe lessons in those other areas could sometimes include a link to a programming experiment. Also, other question: are there any plans to try to cover a broader range of computer science or maybe even software engineering topics, for example things like Objects/Classes, components, unit testing, QA, feedback loops in general or for example between the developers/analysts and the users or between the developer and his test suite?
vph 14y ago
These are good entrepreneurs and programmers, and they are using great tools, but I don't think they are qualified to say they are redefining teaching basic Computer Science. Interactive platforms and approaches have been constantly introduced by CS educators to teach introductory programming. Educators are very aware of the value of interactivity and reactivity in teaching and learning. The only new thing here is the utility of cool new tools equipped with latest web-based technologies. Further, their approach is limited to programming, which is a large part but not the only approach to Introductory Computer Science. For example, they can't touch approaches such at MIT or Rice (I think), among others, which employ cool physical robots to teach coding, thinking, programming and robotics. So this is not so much redefining, but rather a little enhancing CS education with cool tools.
sethish 14y ago
It is disappointing that KA launched their Computer Science program not long after making their website closed source[0]. Doubly disappointing because of open-education projects that were using the software platform to do free education projects in Brazil[1] and Portugal[2]. [0]: https://khanacademy.kilnhg.com/Auth/LogOn?ReturnUrl=/&nr= https://khanacademy.kilnhg.com/Auth/LogOn?ReturnUrl=/&nr... [1]: https://calenglishbr.appspot.com/ https://calenglishbr.appspot.com/ [2]: https://uc3m-ka.appspot.com/login?continue=http%3A%2F%2Fuc3m-ka.appspot.com%2F https://uc3m-ka.appspot.com/login?continue=http%3A%2F%2Fuc3m...
- TheSilentNumber 14y ago
  It's really sad. They were never really concerned with being truly free & open. They just were "open" in the wishy-washy way that when you do anything online for free, you can call it open and get lots of support.
  - schrijver 14y ago
    So why are these remarks getting downvoted? BTW, could someone provide links with more details, i.e. what was closed, this still appears pretty open: https://github.com/khan/khan-exercises https://github.com/khan/khan-exercises
    - shardling 14y ago
      I think they're getting downvoted for being incorrect. I can't find any info about KA moving to closed source.
- jnbiche 14y ago
  Umm, I think it's all still open-sourced. It's just hosted at Github, which probably integrates it better into the open source community: https://github.com/khan https://github.com/khan They even make their ec2 instances open source!
warmfuzzykitten 14y ago
Seems clear they are teaching Programming and not Computer Science. There's nothing wrong with that, but they should be upfront about it.
- ZeroGravitas 14y ago
  Quite far down the long post they say: "One question is obviously: How much “Computer Science” do we actually teach? Obviously, right now we’re not teaching very much in the way of traditional Computer Science content, we’ve placed far more focus onto the platform and feel that a lot can be gained from just what we’ve already built. We’re still very early on in the production of content and will be producing much more, of increasing complexity, over the upcoming weeks and months. We decided that it was much more fruitful for us to tackle the most challenging problem that exists with Computer Science education first: Getting people excited about programming. If we can get people excited about programming, and build (or point them to) the resources they need to learn more then we will have been successful. Eventually I think we’ll work to effectively replicate the materials one typically finds in a “Computer Science 101″ but in a way that is far more engaging and self-paced than what you would find at a traditional university."
scottrblock 14y ago
I think a small, beautiful detail lost here is John Resig's career path. As the creator of jQuery, he probably had his choice of which sexy SV start-up to go work at. He chose a non-profit that's aiming to fundamentally improve his country's education. Pretty admirable if you ask me, and perhaps more importantly, a slice of hope, that if one desires to, he or she can use his or her time to change the world for the better.
scoith 14y ago
Was there something wrong with the old definition?
archivator 14y ago
This is not unlike Bret Victor's work - http://vimeo.com/36579366 http://vimeo.com/36579366 . Do watch the video, if you have an hour to spare, it's a beautiful demonstration of "programming by tinkering."
suyash 14y ago
I feel this approach is more confusing than clearer specially for beginners. Without giving a primer to the proposed languages (seems like they are using javascript and css), I feel a newbie would get more confused and leave the site after a few minutes.
Rickasaurus 14y ago
Programming is not computer science.
Morg 14y ago
Well I'm sorry John, but Java was already a step down from C, and JS is truly paving the way to more ignorant programmers coding random crap with truly no idea of what a processor is or does. I thought we had enough of those - really. And no, javascript is not the language of the future, and the only reason it got so much attention is because it was the logical first step for web designers learning to code. Incidently, those same web designers then go on to use PHP, which everyone looks down upon, and MySQL, which I confirm is a true joke of an RDBMS.
gadders 14y ago
I understand why they only want the latest browsers, but it sucks that I can't look at it in my spare time at my locked down corporate (IE8) environment.
bwlang 14y ago
I "watched" the first lesson or two. I think they've missed an opportunity to tighten the watch-try-watch loop with the student. This tachnology seems like it would support a mode like "here is how you draw a box" then "you try drawing a box that overlaps with the box on the screen". Maybe they do that later. I hope so, otherwise I think they're missing a great opportunity for engagement. Even without that level of interaction, I still plan to try this out with my children. Really impressive.
bhb916 14y ago
I sat my 5-year-old daughter down in front of the first drawing tutorial today (Introduction to Drawing). I let her watch the video, then asked her some questions to test her comprehension. Before I could too many questions out she blurted "I want to build a house," and off we went. I learned a few things: 1. We seriously need to work on her typing skills. We practice typing once a week but I think I need to increase that. 2. I need to go out and buy a smaller mouse to fit her hand. 3. She immediately understood functions and parameters, which, honestly, was all I really wanted her to get out of this. 4. The sliders are critical. She has never seen a coordinate system, but the sliders allow her to play around with location without completely understanding what the numbers represent. 5. At this age, she was engaged because she could draw things (she had a house worked out in about 15 minutes, which was also the limit of her attention span). I'm not always a fan of gaming things up to make them more palatable, but it definitely worked here.

480 points by spicyj 14y ago

He mentions the responsive design being really hard, and that was something I couldn't quite articulate to myself when I saw that talk a while ago... the ideas Bret Victor presented, only a handful of them are general purpose. I don't see how one could develop the timing examples he had, for instance, in a way that makes sense outside of his specific work on his 2D platform game.

dons 14y ago

Some similarities with Felleisen's work teaching programming to early high schoolers, - http://www.programbydesign.org/ http://www.programbydesign.org/ Those folks have tons of data on what works, what doesn't. I get a bit of a NIH feeling from this effort, that I hope is unfounded.

lacerus 14y ago
NIH = Not Invented Here, in case somebody else is wondering also.
- jonahkagan 14y ago
  Ah, so not National Institutes of Health. Makes more sense now
  - shardling 14y ago
    It is pretty confusing -- maybe we should invent a new acronym for use on HN. >_>
rabidsnail 14y ago
Having everything run in the browser is a _huge_ win, because it allows students to share what they've made with their friends. Post to facebook "Look what I made", which includes the source and makes it easy for others to modify it and share that themselves. Viral loop!
- soegaard 14y ago
  It is possible to use Scheme in the browser too: http://www.wescheme.org/
  - rabidsnail 14y ago
    Yes, but it's not possible to run Dr. Scheme in the browser. So there would still have to be a fair amount (ie almost all) of reinvention.

bpierre 14y ago

We are working on a similar project (programming education), but in a persistent and multiplayer environment. It’s more like a live game framework which allows to learn JavaScript, or just to have fun! Everything is programmable: the display of a bot (Canvas 2D Context API), the buttons used to to control it, the interactions between the bots, etc. https://github.com/bpierre/modul.io https://github.com/bpierre/modul.io

bazookaBen 14y ago

tried it. The greatest takeaway for me is being able to edit the code and see changes live.

look_lookatme 14y ago

This is cool and I think Javascript is a perfectly suitable first time language, but I don't think it's ideal. Too many ways of doing things, too many code organization and programming styles... it's going to be confusing for people moving beyond the courses. Still it's better than c++ or java.

dpritchett 14y ago
This could easily leverage CoffeeScript or even an education-oriented language that compiles to JS, but then the students wouldn't be able to immediately turn around and build real-world apps without additional cognitive overhead.
phleet 14y ago
Hey - I'm one of the interns that worked on this. I have my own reservations about JavaScript the language, but after seeing what John had built when I started, I believe that this is undoubtedly the right way to go. If we wanted to use another language to accomplish similar goals, the options would be: 1. Run the code on the server. This dramatically increases latency, introduces more security concerns and would dramatically increase our costs as this would inflate our server load dramatically. Really, its the latency here that makes this a no-go. As you use the number scrubber, it's re-executing several times a second, and that's just not going to work out with client-server communication (even with websockets). 2. Run a different language that compiles to JS and runs in the browser. As it stands, the overhead of doing this is also too much. It would be shipping a compiler or parser down to every client. CoffeeScript may be the most reasonable option there, but it has many of the same warts as JavaScript anyway. Any parser/compiler needed introduces an extra step in the pipeline and would inevitably reduce responsiveness. While JavaScript the language certainly has its problems, it's what it lets you do that counts here.
- chromatic 14y ago
  Run a different language that compiles to JS and runs in the browser. As it stands, the overhead of doing this is also too much. Not at all--it takes some work, but especially if most programs are less than a few hundred lines long, the overhead is far less than you think!

sciurus 14y ago

Anyone have a cached copy? ejohn.org is returning a 500 error.

iyerrag 14y ago
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://ejohn.org/blog/introducing-khan-cs/ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

msg 14y ago

Interesting. I have shown my son the Logo turtle, but hopefully this will make even more sense to him. I was looking for a way to expose him to Processing but unsure where to begin. It's obvious now. We are home schooling and always looking for new and interesting stuff to do with him. Thank you, John.

archon 14y ago
Thank you for being willing to teach your son programming. I was homeschooled with a programmer for a dad and I guess it just never occurred to him to teach me himself. I discovered programming on my own in late high school, but I would have loved it when I was younger.
- rhizome 14y ago
  I had a similar experience with a programmer Dad, so you're not alone.
- thaumasiotes 14y ago
  same
- warfangle 14y ago
  I had a programmer dad, and was homeschooled. The first thing he did when I asked how I could cheat at the various qbasic games we had (a la game genie) was hand me a Learn Qbasic book. He said I'd know how to cheat once I finished working my way through the book. Eventually I did learn how to cheat, but got bored with it. So I made them harder ;) Sorry yours wasn't the same!
- joelhooks 14y ago
  We homeschool, and I've always tried to present my kids with programming concepts. Scratch, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Squeak, and a few others. My oldest has shown intermittent interest, but he's had plenty of exposure. He will definitely be able to say "I started programming when I was 8" - and I assume that when/if he catches the bug, he will know where to look and what/who to ask.

workingbrains 14y ago

Useful site

jameshsi 14y ago

This is great. I volunteered at Maker's Faire earlier this year at the Scratch booth and a lot of parents were wondering what some possible next steps could be for their kids who were interested in learning more about programming. It felt a little weird suggesting Khan Academy videos, but with this project I think the transition to deeper CS concepts is a lot more seamless for those who are curious

crusso 14y ago

This is very exciting. I was just looking around this past weekend for a way to introduce my 10 and 13 year-olds to programming concepts. I want them to understand more about the computer than how to play warcraft, watch youtube videos of pandas, or even make slide presentations. My one daughter is going into 8th grade and has had a total of two half-semesters of "business and computer science" where the most they do is to play around with PowerPoint and Excel. Computers are so integral to every-day life now. It's positively disgraceful that every child shouldn't be educated on what they are, how they're built, how they work, how to program them, etc.

eranation 14y ago

Love it, Who is the presenter in the videos? the voice sound really similar to Vi Hart or is it just me?

Encosia 14y ago
Sal Khan and John Resig are narrating the video.
- eranation 14y ago
  I know, I talk about the actual videos, e.g. this one http://www.khanacademy.org/cs/intro-to-drawing/848372201 http://www.khanacademy.org/cs/intro-to-drawing/848372201
  - jeresig 14y ago
    They are narrated by Jessica Liu (as mentioned in the blog post).
    - eranation 14y ago
      Thanks, she is doing an amazing job
shardling 14y ago
Well, Vi Hart works for Khan now.
dbaupp 14y ago
Vi Hart does work at Khan Academy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi_Hart#Khan_Academy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi_Hart#Khan_Academy

karpathy 14y ago

Don't miss the link to Bret Victor's lecture on responsive programming: http://vimeo.com/36579366 http://vimeo.com/36579366 . I found it to be very enjoyable and it further shows what is possible with this paradigm. [minutes 2-23 are most interesting and relevant]

agentultra 14y ago
While I enjoyed that video, it came to me as a bit of surprise that this style of programming is being "rediscovered." Anyone remember Morphic, Squeak, Lisp, etc? Emacs? Lively Kernel is pretty darn cool too. I'm not saying it's bad, I think it's cool that this style of programming is making a come back (and about bloody time I suppose). The only thing I'm not certain of with this course is actually calling it, "Computer Science." Perhaps that's because I tend to agree with those who question whether it is indeed a science at all. However after watching a few videos and trying some of the exercises it seems to me to be a great way to learn how to program.
andyl 14y ago
Does JReisig's work support the Bret Victor idea of selecting the line of code and highlighting the pixels that it draws?? (shown at 8:00 in the Bret Victor video)

powrtoch 14y ago

It's hard for me to imagine learning Javascript as your first programming language. It's always felt kind of crazy and bizarre to me (especially when you try to do anything requiring more than 20 lines of code), but I think a lot of that is just failure on my part to shake off the paradigms I'm used to. A generation of coders who are actually trained from the start to think in Javascript... almost scary honestly, but in a good way. We need more John Resigs pushing the web forward :-)

majormajor 14y ago
Javascript has its oddities for sure, but most of that lies in areas that you wouldn't need to touch while learning programming basics. Compared to my high school experience of learning in a C/C++ mismash with a teacher who insisted on introducing pointers very early, before ever presenting me with anything interesting to do which would make me want to figure out the details like that (and which scared me off programming for four years), I think it sounds like a dream.
- slurgfest 14y ago
  Although I like Javascript and its tools have improved dramatically in the last few years, a number of cases (like [] + {} vs. {} + []) are decisively non-ideal for teaching people who are not somewhat versed in programming languages. It's this kind of thing which gave Javascript a reputation as a kind of client side PHP. I would be very happy if these kinds of irrationalities could be ironed out in a future version of the language, even if it meant backward incompatibility. If the language is thoroughly rationalized and there is a simple, beautiful API for graphics then I think it becomes the beginner's language to end all (since client-side web is such a nice platform to target). But for now, it isn't there... I'd be happy to hear that it was a priority. Perhaps something like Dart will pick up that quest.
  - hnherer 14y ago
    perfect!
  - Me1000 14y ago

crag 14y ago

Best part of the intro video: "Welcome. I'm super excited about computer science. it's my favoriate thing in the world... except for pot". QFT.

rhc2104 14y ago
I believe she says "pie", and not "pot".
- crag 14y ago
  You sure about that? I heard pot. Maybe I just "wanted" to hear pot. I'll listen again.
  - UK-AL 14y ago
    I don't think it would be wise for a kids education site to reference pot.
    - crag 14y ago
      Ok ok.. I still hear "pot".. but that's probably my "New Yorker ears" tuning. You are right though; since it's aimed at high school, I doubt it's pot. ;(
      - pitchups 14y ago
        If it sounds like "pot", doesn't matter if he really said "pie"; chances are many kids are going to hear "pot" too unfortunately.
- dylanvee 14y ago
  Definitely pie. On Tau Day the Khan Academy office was graced with a wonderful tau (two pie).

daviddaviddavid 14y ago

This looks really great. One criticism is that this style of graphical programming is overwhelmingly of a mathematical bent. Granted it's quite basic arithmetic but still, you open a code sample and you're confronted with a bunch of numbers and mathematical expressions. My worry with this is that there are many, many youngsters out there who are intimidated by math but who would absolutely love to write code. This is especially worrisome since such a huge amount of coding involves no math at all.

jeresig 14y ago
In our experience thus far we've found that students are far less intimidated by the numbers/math when they're able to directly manipulate the results. When they can tweak the numbers with minimal ramifications and instantaneous feedback they can easily intuit what the numbers are attempting to do. Working with young kids we definitely found that they were comfortable in this environment even after minimal introduction.

jonahkagan 14y ago

Awesome stuff. John Resig, if you're in here, can you give any details on the challenges of instantly updating the Processing sketch? I can just wait for the blog post, but I'm really curious. Also, what components exactly are you planning to release open source? The other work in this area that I've been able to find is very tightly coupled to the rendering library (d3 or PJS). Is the Khan Academy system open to alternate rendering libraries?

kinleyd 14y ago
Yeah, real awesome stuff, John Resig! Your follow through on Bret Victor's 'Inventing on principle' is mind blowing. I'm getting my kids on it right away. Thank you.

thesash 14y ago

Learning tools like this would have saved my teachers a lot of headaches if they were available 10 years ago. As opposed to the classroom model of: [lecture -> assign work -> grade & return with static feedback], students can actually play with the subject matter during the lesson, instead of turning pens into projectiles or doodling in their books because they're bored to death (not that I know anything about that). Then they get immediate feedback, whether right or wrong, by seeing how the instructor would have solved the problem. That kind of hands on learning, where the student learns through their own trials and errors is much more fun than sitting through a lecture that has to accomodate the varied learning paces of a classroom of 20+ students. The video posted here unfortunately focuses on the live editing aspect of the app, but you can see the interactive lesson function more clearly in this early prototype video[1]. This kind of interactive learning is the same thing that Sebastian Thrun is working on at Udacity[2]. For all the promise of making university courses available for free online, I think this is the truly disruptive stuff going on in online education, because it's way beyond just filming lectures and throwing them online, it's a fundamental leap forward for education. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvaaude_1hk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvaaude_1hk [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75TP3hoPA8U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75TP3hoPA8U

richcollins 14y ago
play with the subject matter during the lesson Kind of removes the need for a "lesson" and teacher, in favor of a facilitator that can go around and help those learning to discover things they hadn't considered.
- robryan 14y ago
  Sounds like what is happening in the lower year levels these days.
barik 14y ago
> Learning tools like this would have saved my teachers a lot of headaches if they were available 10 years ago. This type of teaching has a formal name. It's sometimes called course delivery reversal or course flipping, with the idea being that, essentially, the "lecture" is done outside of the class, and the "homework" is done within class. In this way, you can have a subject matter expert present at the time when he or she is actually needed. I've tried it in my own courses (recording in Camtasia and having students watch the lecture outside of class, where they can rewind, pause, etc.), then dedicating the entire class time to allow the students to actually work problems. More generally, active learning has been gaining popularity in the classroom.

rabidsnail 14y ago

Little nitpick: Why make the draw event handler a magic variable instead of a function which takes a function? Ie: var draw = function() { point(random(0, 400), random(0, 400)); }; as opposed to onDraw(function() { point(random(0, 400), random(0, 400)); }); AFAICT there aren't any other variables that side-effect based on what you've assigned to them.

phleet 14y ago
Granted this is certainly not JS best practices, but following best practices was not our goal here. Explaining variable assignment is much simple than explaining callbacks and/or higher order functions. On a more practical note, this is the convention that processing.js uses, and thats what we're using to render the canvas.
pbreit 14y ago
The former is much easier to understand.

VikingCoder 14y ago

I am done with all of you so-called "hands-on people" who don't give people real tools to use. The XO (One Laptop Per Child) and now this. Please stop giving people tinker-toy environments with tinker-toy problems that have nothing to do with the real world. If someone's not motivated to learn, yes, they may need this kind of hand-holding. But if someone genuinely wants to learn to program computers for a living, this is - in my opinion - not what they need at all. Drivers Education is taught in a real car, not in Mario Kart on a Wii. I'm sick of the Mario Kart version of computers being spoon-fed to otherwise intelligent people as though it has anything to do with reality. I learned to program using Turbo Pascal. I was not so far removed from reality that everything I learned was almost completely useless. I have not given this much attention yet, but so far, it feels completely useless. PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong.

VikingCoder 14y ago
"Reducing the complexity of getting started down to zero will result in more people learning." Yes, but you're removing NECESSARY complexity, in order for them to learn something barely worth learning. "I feel that purely textual coding environments (or coding environments that favor textual output over visual output) serve as a highly uninteresting introduction to programming." There are people who get to use non-textual coding environments, and there are people who get to work with very visual outputs. I feel that by giving them these tools, you've castrated their ability to understand anything meaningful. "Obviously, right now we’re not teaching very much in the way of traditional Computer Science content," Yeah, approximately none of it. "We decided that it was much more fruitful for us to tackle the most challenging problem that exists with Computer Science education first: Getting people excited about programming." Of the people who are AT ALL interested in learning about programming, I have encountered exactly zero of them who aren't already excited about it. Why do you think that GETTING them excited is the "most challenging problem"? I absolutely applaud the effort, and I sincerely wish you success. I just personally think you're doing it all wrong.
- yusefnapora 14y ago
  > Of the people who are AT ALL interested in learning about programming, I have encountered exactly zero of them who aren't already excited about it. How is this tautology at all helpful? Of course the people who are excited about programming are excited about it. For every one of those, how many view computers as entertaining magic boxes? Most non-programmers I know regard programming as a kind of impenetrable dark art. There is such a monumental disconnect between "Hello World" and "I can do whatever I want!" that most people just assume that they'll never be able to achieve any meaningful result. Being able to create something visually interesting that you can share with your friends is a big motivator, and I think you're too quick to deride it. Also, I don't get why you view this as something "barely worth learning." The "real world" doesn't run on Turbo Pascal anymore, and Javascript, like it or not, is a big part of modern programming. Do you really think it will be so difficult to translate skills acquired generating interesting games into skills that can be used in a modern web shop? Anyway, you're welcome to your opinion, I just personally don't understand it. Luckily for people that share your opinion, there are plenty of traditional CS resources all over the web and elsewhere to learn programming in the "real world." For those whose "real world" consists of playing games and wondering how they work, this might just be the thing that motivates them to look under the hood.

johntb86 14y ago

I wonder if they've added any help for transitioning out of their sandbox. I know when I first learned programming, one problem I had was taking what I learned in the classroom on Apple IIs and transitioning to using GW-Basic or QBasic at home. Transitioning from a browser-based sandbox to editing HTML and real files would probably be even worse. It might be nice if there was an easy framework they would let people download to help them create things in a more normal environment, so they don't get stuck and give up at that point.

schrijver 14y ago
I very much agree… In fact a large part of learning to code is not much grab abstract principles as it is getting accustomed to the eco system: how code relies on other code, how it is organised on files, and how it gets uploaded to the internet. It would be great if this site provided the opportunity to download a set of html and js files that re-implement the result of the students… a great starting point also for a teacher to talk about these issues… and a way for students to walk outside the garden when they feel like it…

hanibash 14y ago

Probably like many others, I learned to program first by developing web applications. The mass of information and multiple moving pieces frustrated me almost to the point of quitting. There are probably many people who did quit when introduced to programming this way. This CS learning platform brings programming education back to its simple roots, back when your first program was as simple as drawing a circle in BASIC. It also leaps it forward, borrowing ideas from Bret Victors responsiveness talk was brilliant and I hope sets a precedent for programming education moving forward. I really admire what you've done, Mr. Resig and the Khan Academy team!

ilaksh 14y ago

This is massively badass. I think this may be the best tool out there for learning programming. One issue I am having here in Chrome in Ubuntu on my computer is that some of the videos are giving me minor playback problems where some visual features are not visible. For example, in the intro to drawing tutorial the rectangle seems to turn into a line because three of the sides are not visible. This is probably just what I get for using Linux though. Anyway, I was wondering: have Mr. Khan and the rest of them put any thought into how the new interactive programming environment might be applied to learning math or other concepts taught by Khan Academy besides Computer Science? Like specifically taking some of the math or other lessons and presenting applications to tweak that would demonstrate those concepts. Maybe lessons in those other areas could sometimes include a link to a programming experiment. Also, other question: are there any plans to try to cover a broader range of computer science or maybe even software engineering topics, for example things like Objects/Classes, components, unit testing, QA, feedback loops in general or for example between the developers/analysts and the users or between the developer and his test suite?

vph 14y ago

These are good entrepreneurs and programmers, and they are using great tools, but I don't think they are qualified to say they are redefining teaching basic Computer Science. Interactive platforms and approaches have been constantly introduced by CS educators to teach introductory programming. Educators are very aware of the value of interactivity and reactivity in teaching and learning. The only new thing here is the utility of cool new tools equipped with latest web-based technologies. Further, their approach is limited to programming, which is a large part but not the only approach to Introductory Computer Science. For example, they can't touch approaches such at MIT or Rice (I think), among others, which employ cool physical robots to teach coding, thinking, programming and robotics. So this is not so much redefining, but rather a little enhancing CS education with cool tools.

sethish 14y ago

It is disappointing that KA launched their Computer Science program not long after making their website closed source[0]. Doubly disappointing because of open-education projects that were using the software platform to do free education projects in Brazil[1] and Portugal[2]. [0]: https://khanacademy.kilnhg.com/Auth/LogOn?ReturnUrl=/&nr= https://khanacademy.kilnhg.com/Auth/LogOn?ReturnUrl=/&nr... [1]: https://calenglishbr.appspot.com/ https://calenglishbr.appspot.com/ [2]: https://uc3m-ka.appspot.com/login?continue=http%3A%2F%2Fuc3m-ka.appspot.com%2F https://uc3m-ka.appspot.com/login?continue=http%3A%2F%2Fuc3m...

TheSilentNumber 14y ago
It's really sad. They were never really concerned with being truly free & open. They just were "open" in the wishy-washy way that when you do anything online for free, you can call it open and get lots of support.
- schrijver 14y ago
  So why are these remarks getting downvoted? BTW, could someone provide links with more details, i.e. what was closed, this still appears pretty open: https://github.com/khan/khan-exercises https://github.com/khan/khan-exercises
  - shardling 14y ago
    I think they're getting downvoted for being incorrect. I can't find any info about KA moving to closed source.
jnbiche 14y ago
Umm, I think it's all still open-sourced. It's just hosted at Github, which probably integrates it better into the open source community: https://github.com/khan https://github.com/khan They even make their ec2 instances open source!

warmfuzzykitten 14y ago

Seems clear they are teaching Programming and not Computer Science. There's nothing wrong with that, but they should be upfront about it.

ZeroGravitas 14y ago
Quite far down the long post they say: "One question is obviously: How much “Computer Science” do we actually teach? Obviously, right now we’re not teaching very much in the way of traditional Computer Science content, we’ve placed far more focus onto the platform and feel that a lot can be gained from just what we’ve already built. We’re still very early on in the production of content and will be producing much more, of increasing complexity, over the upcoming weeks and months. We decided that it was much more fruitful for us to tackle the most challenging problem that exists with Computer Science education first: Getting people excited about programming. If we can get people excited about programming, and build (or point them to) the resources they need to learn more then we will have been successful. Eventually I think we’ll work to effectively replicate the materials one typically finds in a “Computer Science 101″ but in a way that is far more engaging and self-paced than what you would find at a traditional university."

scottrblock 14y ago

I think a small, beautiful detail lost here is John Resig's career path. As the creator of jQuery, he probably had his choice of which sexy SV start-up to go work at. He chose a non-profit that's aiming to fundamentally improve his country's education. Pretty admirable if you ask me, and perhaps more importantly, a slice of hope, that if one desires to, he or she can use his or her time to change the world for the better.

scoith 14y ago

Was there something wrong with the old definition?

archivator 14y ago

This is not unlike Bret Victor's work - http://vimeo.com/36579366 http://vimeo.com/36579366 . Do watch the video, if you have an hour to spare, it's a beautiful demonstration of "programming by tinkering."

suyash 14y ago

I feel this approach is more confusing than clearer specially for beginners. Without giving a primer to the proposed languages (seems like they are using javascript and css), I feel a newbie would get more confused and leave the site after a few minutes.

Rickasaurus 14y ago

Programming is not computer science.

Morg 14y ago

Well I'm sorry John, but Java was already a step down from C, and JS is truly paving the way to more ignorant programmers coding random crap with truly no idea of what a processor is or does. I thought we had enough of those - really. And no, javascript is not the language of the future, and the only reason it got so much attention is because it was the logical first step for web designers learning to code. Incidently, those same web designers then go on to use PHP, which everyone looks down upon, and MySQL, which I confirm is a true joke of an RDBMS.

gadders 14y ago

I understand why they only want the latest browsers, but it sucks that I can't look at it in my spare time at my locked down corporate (IE8) environment.

bwlang 14y ago

I "watched" the first lesson or two. I think they've missed an opportunity to tighten the watch-try-watch loop with the student. This tachnology seems like it would support a mode like "here is how you draw a box" then "you try drawing a box that overlaps with the box on the screen". Maybe they do that later. I hope so, otherwise I think they're missing a great opportunity for engagement. Even without that level of interaction, I still plan to try this out with my children. Really impressive.

bhb916 14y ago

I sat my 5-year-old daughter down in front of the first drawing tutorial today (Introduction to Drawing). I let her watch the video, then asked her some questions to test her comprehension. Before I could too many questions out she blurted "I want to build a house," and off we went. I learned a few things: 1. We seriously need to work on her typing skills. We practice typing once a week but I think I need to increase that. 2. I need to go out and buy a smaller mouse to fit her hand. 3. She immediately understood functions and parameters, which, honestly, was all I really wanted her to get out of this. 4. The sliders are critical. She has never seen a coordinate system, but the sliders allow her to play around with location without completely understanding what the numbers represent. 5. At this age, she was engaged because she could draw things (she had a house worked out in about 15 minutes, which was also the limit of her attention span). I'm not always a fan of gaming things up to make them more palatable, but it definitely worked here.