5 ms·

Bringing Boys And Girls To Computer Science With 'Alice'

14 points by emontero1 17y ago

stevejohnson 17y ago
I really wish people would stop naming their software 'Alice.' This is at least the third one I've seen. On the other hand, it sounds effective at getting people interested in programming.
- gjm11 17y ago
  This one's been around for years. Does it actually postdate your other two examples?
pbhj 17y ago
Article: "Rodger, who is trying to turn that around by making programming fun to learn." [...] Prof Rodger: "It's a nationwide problem that there aren't many women in computer science in general. For example, we only have three women faculty in our department, out of 24 positions. And it's been the same for the 15 years I've been here." And? 3 women in the faculty, what's the relevance? I don't understand what the sex of the programmer has to do with anything. What is the nationwide problem that having more female programmers will correct?
- patio11 17y ago
  I think the strategy is hope that girls are accomplished enough logical thinkers to be successful programmers, who can nonetheless be bamboozled into believing that a career in computer science will involve a lot of telling fantastic stories about golfing dragons without ever having to write code. You are never going to address a gap in the number of female programmers by playing around with dragon-and-drop programming. Industry does not need dragon-and-drop. They need people who will take an intensely boring specification document about business rules for an insurance company, and translate that specification document into functional Java code and XML files. Your XML editor will not have a dragon-and-drop interface. A large part of me thinks that people who are not programmers are not programmers precisely because they have some notion of what programmers actually do for a living and would hate it.
  - jerf 17y ago
    As much as I loved the phrase "dragon-and-drop interface", I believe it works better as "dragon-drop interface".
antiform 17y ago
Does anybody here know somebody that has used this program to aid their learning of computer science concepts? It's certainly an admirable cause, but is this a better introduction to programming than something like Logo, which has been used to teach programming to kids for many years? Alice is impressive, and you can see the obvious programming influence, but it seems like "Moviemaker with control flow and objects" more than anything else. What problem is it trying to solve? For me, the hardest part of learning elementary computer science was not things like OOP or if-statements, it was data structures, algorithms, and the difficulty of keeping many different interactions in your headspace. It seems like in many CS programs, the data structures or algorithms class is the "weeder" that separates the CS majors from the wannabe CS majors. Personally, I believe the drop-off at this level is more important to address than how many students enroll in CS 101.
- jerf 17y ago
  Step one is to "break the ice" and get them interested in computers. Step two is to figure out if they're any good at that. A good childhood should be spent breaking the ice on numerous possible interests and finding out what works with you and what doesn't. Everybody gets abundant opportunity today to figure out whether they like sports, of all kinds; we could do with more (good!) opportunities to figure out if you like programming, or many of the other interests and hobbies that few children ever get exposed to. Most won't be any good at programming. That's OK, because everybody should be trying lots of things, and you won't be terribly good at most of them. (Where "good" here includes some concept of enjoying it enough to want to do it on your own, along with raw talent.)
- pbhj 17y ago
  re: Logo, this http://scratch.mit.edu/ http://scratch.mit.edu/ seems to be superficially similar
dfield 17y ago
I used Alice to start off a beginning programming class at the high school level. It worked great - they got really into it and loved to make things. I think it helped my students' programming intuition as well as retain some of the girls who were very hesitant about taking the class.
daeken 17y ago
I'm glad to see more attention come to this project. As noted in article, this was originally started by Randy Pausch, known in large part for his "The Last Lecture" lecture and book. He did some amazing things, and this project is carrying on his legacy.
yesimahuman 17y ago
What really got me into programming was making web pages. In school they never really go past "Here is how to make a link and make text bold". I think a lot of kids could see the artistic and creative side to making an interactive website that all their friends check out. I could see kids competing to see who can add the coolest feature or make it look the best. But alas, my public school never got far enough into anything for people to make anything fun.

14 points by emontero1 17y ago

I really wish people would stop naming their software 'Alice.' This is at least the third one I've seen. On the other hand, it sounds effective at getting people interested in programming.

gjm11 17y ago
This one's been around for years. Does it actually postdate your other two examples?

pbhj 17y ago

Article: "Rodger, who is trying to turn that around by making programming fun to learn." [...] Prof Rodger: "It's a nationwide problem that there aren't many women in computer science in general. For example, we only have three women faculty in our department, out of 24 positions. And it's been the same for the 15 years I've been here." And? 3 women in the faculty, what's the relevance? I don't understand what the sex of the programmer has to do with anything. What is the nationwide problem that having more female programmers will correct?

patio11 17y ago
I think the strategy is hope that girls are accomplished enough logical thinkers to be successful programmers, who can nonetheless be bamboozled into believing that a career in computer science will involve a lot of telling fantastic stories about golfing dragons without ever having to write code. You are never going to address a gap in the number of female programmers by playing around with dragon-and-drop programming. Industry does not need dragon-and-drop. They need people who will take an intensely boring specification document about business rules for an insurance company, and translate that specification document into functional Java code and XML files. Your XML editor will not have a dragon-and-drop interface. A large part of me thinks that people who are not programmers are not programmers precisely because they have some notion of what programmers actually do for a living and would hate it.
- jerf 17y ago
  As much as I loved the phrase "dragon-and-drop interface", I believe it works better as "dragon-drop interface".

antiform 17y ago

Does anybody here know somebody that has used this program to aid their learning of computer science concepts? It's certainly an admirable cause, but is this a better introduction to programming than something like Logo, which has been used to teach programming to kids for many years? Alice is impressive, and you can see the obvious programming influence, but it seems like "Moviemaker with control flow and objects" more than anything else. What problem is it trying to solve? For me, the hardest part of learning elementary computer science was not things like OOP or if-statements, it was data structures, algorithms, and the difficulty of keeping many different interactions in your headspace. It seems like in many CS programs, the data structures or algorithms class is the "weeder" that separates the CS majors from the wannabe CS majors. Personally, I believe the drop-off at this level is more important to address than how many students enroll in CS 101.

jerf 17y ago
Step one is to "break the ice" and get them interested in computers. Step two is to figure out if they're any good at that. A good childhood should be spent breaking the ice on numerous possible interests and finding out what works with you and what doesn't. Everybody gets abundant opportunity today to figure out whether they like sports, of all kinds; we could do with more (good!) opportunities to figure out if you like programming, or many of the other interests and hobbies that few children ever get exposed to. Most won't be any good at programming. That's OK, because everybody should be trying lots of things, and you won't be terribly good at most of them. (Where "good" here includes some concept of enjoying it enough to want to do it on your own, along with raw talent.)
pbhj 17y ago
re: Logo, this http://scratch.mit.edu/ http://scratch.mit.edu/ seems to be superficially similar

dfield 17y ago

I used Alice to start off a beginning programming class at the high school level. It worked great - they got really into it and loved to make things. I think it helped my students' programming intuition as well as retain some of the girls who were very hesitant about taking the class.

daeken 17y ago

I'm glad to see more attention come to this project. As noted in article, this was originally started by Randy Pausch, known in large part for his "The Last Lecture" lecture and book. He did some amazing things, and this project is carrying on his legacy.

yesimahuman 17y ago

What really got me into programming was making web pages. In school they never really go past "Here is how to make a link and make text bold". I think a lot of kids could see the artistic and creative side to making an interactive website that all their friends check out. I could see kids competing to see who can add the coolest feature or make it look the best. But alas, my public school never got far enough into anything for people to make anything fun.