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I'm accustomed to popular blog blowhards repeating the "you can't write code on an iPad" mantra, but I expect better here. We all know you can write code on an
by robterrell 13y ago
I'm accustomed to popular blog blowhards repeating the "you can't write code on an iPad" mantra, but I expect better here. We all know you can write code on an iPad, right? Off the top of my head, I can think of free/cheap apps in the app store for JavaScript, Python, Scheme, Perl.
Or Lua... my kids have my hand-me-down iPads. Each has Codea installed. Codea is a gorgeous Lua development environment with a great on-device editor and great libraries for sprites, sound, touch, accelerometer, and physics.
For some things, the Codea editor is better than what I use at work. For instance, if a function takes a color value as an argument, when the cursor is in that character position, a color picker pops up. Likewise, when using the sprite command, instead of typing in a name you can open a popover that displays a list of sprites on the device. It pulls assets from your photo library or links to your dropbox, so you can easily get assets in and out of the device.
My daughter decided to make a program to implement the sorting hat from Harry Potter. She googled for images of the sorting hat and other harry potter things, saved them to the device, and spent an hour obsessively re-writing her draw function so that things appeared where she wanted them to. She was stumped by randomness, so I helped her look in the built-in reference for math.random() and, with another assist on how to write an if-else block, she figured out how to use it. Keyboard input was rougher (Codea lacks the common UI widgets) but she got something working to her satisfaction.
So, after a few hours of playing around, she had a fun little sorting hat toy. She understands variables, incrementing variables every frame to create animation, what the word "random" really means (as opposed to her previous definition for the word, from some Disney channel show), and how to do some basic if-else flow control. Now when people ask her about her iPad, she says she knows Lua and shows them her sorting hat.
Codea can export directly to an Xcode project, so next weekend we're going to turn her sorting hat game into an app and install it on her iPad. I think that's when she'll be fully converted into a mobile app developing geek.
So, the article... there's a fun walk down memory lane (I, too, goofed off in school writing games for a programmable calculator) but it's unfortunate that he framed it with a TI-verus-iPad. Plus, his conclusion is just plain wrong.
- bonaldi 13y agoThat is incredibly great, Rob! Good on her.
- zimbatm 13y agoThat's where the story ends though. I never owned a TI-83 but I remember class-mates linking their TI and sharing programs. Here you have to export to Xcode, pay Apple $99 and fill a bunch of forms, wait for app-store approval.
- maxerickson 13y agoThe popular to share programs were probably downloads or copied out of books. I set my high school up with lots of stuff without really ever writing anything...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- robterrell 13y agoReally? She can email her friends the project file or the code. Seems better than linking through some rare cable. And if she really rocks it and makes something people will pay for, she has a venue for it.
- angersock 13y agoSharing programs on an 83 was simplicity itself, and always worked, and cables were usually pretty easy to find.
- hkmurakami 13y agoI remember going to summer camp and getting my classmate's shooter game program ;)
- angersock 13y agoThe day I got the MirageOS app for my calculator was magical.
- raverbashing 13y agoHa, my cable for connecting HP-48s to a computer was... the CD-ROM to Soundcard cable that came in early "Multimedia Kits" But at least it had IR to share files between calculators
- Houshalter 13y agoThe author said that the ipads they gave students are restricted to a few apps approved by administrators. EDIT: Another thing he mentioned was teachers seeing kids playing games or messing around with their calculators as a bad thing. So I doubt they would support white-listing apps that let them run their own code. However they probably come with an web browser, so it defeats the purpose as they can still play games and stuff (unless I'm wrong and they don't.) They could also code with it if they wanted, in javascript or something. I don't think the safari app allows that, but you could find a website that executes user inputted code. I've played with some of those before.
- saraid216 13y ago> what the word "random" really means (as opposed to her previous definition for the word, from some Disney channel show) I am morbidly curious for details.
- Houshalter 13y agoI found this http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40378347?uid=3739840&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102596037487 http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40378347?uid=3739840&u... >A common misconception is that 'randomness' must involve continual change. Ask a group of early high school students to invent a series of 20 random numbers from the integers 1 to 6 and you will usually find some who deliberately never write the same number twice in a row. If you then draw the analogy to rolling a die 20 times, and point out that this process can give the same number twice in a row, some students may insist that this means the die isn't random! Though that doesn't sound like what OP meant.
- kbutler 13y agoProbably the informal "odd, unusual, or unexpected" rather than "made, done, happening, or chosen without method or conscious decision" (definitions from google) See Disney show: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_Random http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_Random!
- saraid216 13y agoThis fits all the data known, and also makes sense and is plausible.
- sillysaurus2 13y agoThat's awesome! How old is she?