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Snap: Programming for Everyone

66 points by jherritz 11y ago

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
protomyth 11y ago
"This is the kind of class that attracts students who actively want to take it: students who are already interested in programming." I would love programming to be more accessible and a much more diverse community, but I think people are starting far from the problem. Look at the percentage of K-8 teachers teaching Math and Science that did not major in their field. Now look at the ratio of female to male teachers in both K-8 and pre-K. We are not providing proper role models in the math and sciences since the teachers teaching the subject didn't consider them in detail enough to major in them. Neither are we providing proper role models for both sexes professionally interacting. The problem is long standing by the time students pick majors and their perception of STEM is long formed. Their are reasons you have to be already interested to succeed and it has to do when "already" happened.
- jherritz 11y ago
  You make some very valid points. There is an underpowered feedback loop here that would take years to amplify naturally. That's why it's important to have programs like BJC right now. It helps tilt the scales without relying on changes to the composition of the teaching field.
  - breakforge 11y ago
    > It helps tilt the scales without relying on changes to the composition of the teaching field. What's are the initials BJC? My searching turned up nothing that immediately fits the context, and I'd like to read more
    - sudont 11y ago
      http://bjc.berkeley.edu/ http://bjc.berkeley.edu/ It's in the article. "Snap is the programming language for UC Berkeley’s Beauty and Joy of Computing curriculum (BJC), which aims to bring introductory CS to a wider range of students than the typical intro to programming does. BJC is also used at the high school level, and is a curriculum for the new AP Computer Science: Principles test."
      - breakforge 11y ago
        Thanks. I was under the impression that it was some channel for experimenting with education. Whoops.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
shiggerino 11y ago
If we're going to have drag-and-drop programming, why not do dataflow, which is where it really comes into its own? Of course if you want to churn out code monkeys for conventional languages, this is great, but if you want to expand people's minds, not so much.
- jherritz 11y ago
  Do you have any thoughts about how you would implement dataflow programming in Snap? I know I'd be excited to see Snap hooked into some of the really interesting streaming data work we're doing at MIOsoft (beyond just the storage of projects).
- dyarosla 11y ago
  There is a big issue with teaching to code and that is if you want it to scale and have teachers introduce kids to coding, you have to make sure that the material taught is very in line with core requirements. Computer science and coding curriculum is not set in stone yet, but where it's going covers the most common language constructs of today, like loops, conditionals and procedural coding. It is a stretch to show how learning to create dataflow programs maps to procedural understanding and algorithms. Moreover, there's very few general purpose dataflow environments that are widely accepted in computer science, and so learning dataflow won't necessarily ease the transition for students to later learn modern programming languages. TL;DR For a layperson, the association between dataflow and 'real coding' is very weak. For a programmer on the other hand, the association may be less weak, but the skill may nonetheless not be applicable to most real world applications.
  - harperlee 11y ago
    > For a layperson, the association between dataflow and 'real coding' is very weak. Excel is basically a dataflow. You can avoid talking about loops with maps, that can be understood immediately with excel tables. Something like Excel that does not divide so strongly between cells and VBA should be ideal. Resolver One was very interesting. That's the approach that I think it's the best: Excel is right now how people that need sort-of programming but don't program bridge the gap. It's huge. It's everywhere. And it's _VISUAL_. Perhaps a simplified Excel for educational purposes is the ideal way to expose people to programming, formal thinking, systems thinking, functional definitions, etc. And, when they jump to real-life Excel, and get culture shock, perhaps they keep using that original program that they were taught. Perhaps there is a viable startup here....
evolve2k 11y ago
I love this progression and think it's exactly right for high school and entry college programs. Conceptually when do people think is the right time to switch from one of these visually languages (optimized for asthetic and visual approachability) across to text based coding? What key 'ah ha' moments for the new student define when they are ready to cross over?
- jherritz 11y ago
  I'm confident that is still an open question. That said, the creator of Snap would probably say there is no need to transition - ever. All Snap code can be viewed and edited as text. It's not an either/or decision, in other words.
- analog31 11y ago
  I think the cross-over occurs when the graphical language becomes too cumbersome due to ergonomics or readability. I have only seen two graphical languages -- Scratch and LabVIEW. I think that these languages may be easier to learn, but are not more readable than text based languages, and vastly less ergonomic. To this day, my eyeballs and carpal tunnels ache just thinking about LabVIEW. My guess is that the corresponding ah-ha moment is when programs grow to where they depend on the benefits of modularity.
  - striking 11y ago
    LabVIEW makes the syntactic stuff a lot easier, but as soon as you want a modular program or you want to create something polished, it stops working the way you want it to. And I'd argue that it's because LabVIEW is meant only for R&D purposes. It does work fairly well for FPGA-based applications but that's often because those programs are fairly compact and uncomplicated when done right. I wish there were a more modular and useful version of LabVIEW (or G or whatever the language is called) because I'd like to use something like that. Not having to worry about execution order is a marvelous thing, and it really transforms the way one thinks.
    - analog31 11y ago
jherritz 11y ago
It looks like there was a nice discussion not long ago on Hacker News about Snap as a programming language. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9591460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9591460
davidhariri 11y ago
Programming is already for everyone!
phren0logy 11y ago
Interesting point from that page is that Brian Harvey (http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/ http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/), one of the last hold-outs who was teaching intro Computer Science with Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (at Berkeley), is involved as a contributor. Here are the materials from his excellent SICP course: * Videos - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmYqShvVDh4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmYqShvVDh4 * Supporting docs - http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/sp11/ http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/sp11/ * SICP textbook - http://www.mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html http://www.mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html
- brlewis 11y ago
  Interesting, but not too surprising. Which syntax looks more like the graphical representation of Snap? f(a, b) (f a b)
- tygorius 11y ago
  Harvey is really a force for good when it comes to making programming and computer science topics accessible to more people. In addition to SICP and SNAP work, he was also a force behind UCB Logo and wound up writing a three volume introduction to computer science for high schoolers. People can read them online at https://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/logo.html https://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/logo.html
kmenzie 11y ago
I really like snap and scratch, and I think they're part of the right approach, but I can already here "those kids" (you know who they are) talking about how whichever students had to take the snap class were dumber, and couldn't really code, and weren't 'real cs majors'-- probably before lecture in some early college cs class while the snap kids are sitting around them. To be clear, I don't have a solution to this part of the problem, but I think that moment (listening to 'those kids' talk about who the 'real hackers' are) can lose as many non-typical engineers as the moment when they have to install their first IDE
- quadrature 11y ago
  Well if everyone took snap as part of the curriculum then you probably won't have that problem. You will always have varying competencies in education.
- analog31 11y ago
  The younger you get kids, the better, before they have learned those sorts of stereotypes. Also, at a younger age, programming doesn't have to be taught as "computer science." It can just be an activity. For me, it was "real programmers don't use BASIC." I let my productivity speak for itself, in things like student research projects.
kazinator 11y ago
> The thing is, the students who are succeeding with this approach to computer science education are primarily white and Asian men. No other demographic is even close. So, cue solution: some toy visual programming language that cognitively challenged (i.e. not white or Asian male) persons can understand and work with? How can people who are trying to address social discrepancies (sensitive types) fail to clue in to the possibility an obvious angle on their message? (Of course, I have all seasons of Daria in my phone, so that helps with the cynicism. La la la LA la!) Maybe they should just say, "we have courses in a nice, fun graphical computer language that doesn't require typing in program text coded in a cryptic notation. We believe it appeals to a wide range of personalities and temperaments, including ones that are not commonly associated with people in the engineering fields". That already contains enough of a stereotype about at least one group; no need to get into naming races and sexes.
TsukasaUjiie 11y ago
The Australian National University teaches a course in Snap aimed at non computer science majors. Whilst I was originally skeptical of the language and thought it might be "babyish" I was pleasantly surprised to see how expressive it was. Most of the labs use a javascript-y like object model behind the scenes and provide useful functional programming primitives (map/fold/etc <3). The response from the students thus far has been pretty great. Some of them are looking into taking more programming courses as part of their degrees; often very separate from computer science. I'm not sure if we would have gotten this result chucking them straight into a CS101 course. https://artofcomputing.cecs.anu.edu.au/ https://artofcomputing.cecs.anu.edu.au/
FD3SA 11y ago
This insane obsession with making programming the "everyman" skill boggles the mind. "Programming", better described as applied mathematics, is not and has never been an accessible profession. Just because you have no trouble taking medication, doesn't mean you are qualified to be a doctor. Just because you use a smartphone, doesn't mean you are qualified to commit to the Linux kernel. I am constantly fascinated by attempts to frame computer science as a trade similar to bricklaying or plumbing. It really could not be further from such work. Computer science is the application of mathematical logic, which by definition, is out of the reach of the majority of students. One look at mathematical aptitude test scores for the general public will disabuse you of the notion that everyone can program. At best, you need to be at least one standard deviation above the mean in mathematical ability to be a competent computer scientist. At worst, factoring in global competition in an unregulated profession, you need to be two to three standard deviations above the mean. Assuming a normal distribution, that's about 2.5% of the population. So, why are we lying to kids with promises of Google jobs? If they're that good at math, they'll know it. They'll be autodidacts, and will use the plethora of resources already available to reach their potential. I'm all for easy to use graphical programming languages, as they truly help to visualize algorithms in a tangible way. But selling it along with an "everyone can program and make money doing it!" promise is absurd.
- chrisrudy502 11y ago
  Just because you aren't qualified to commit to the Linux kernel doesn't mean you aren't qualified to use computer languages for fun and profit.
- pika24 11y ago
  This is silly. Learning to program is learning a new language, learning to make something. It's being creative, persistent, and paying strong attention to detail. It takes time, energy, passion, blood, sweat, and tears, but is a skill that can be acquired and honed.
- G650 11y ago
  Disagree completely. You are stuck in the old world mentality.
- 11y ago
pmalynin 11y ago
I'm not exactly sure what is the fascination with these blocky-looking, dumbed down, drag-and-drop languages that look the same? First code that I wrote was in QBASIC at age 10 (I'm 19 right now), which I found to be very accessible and then later moved on to learning C# with the help of various XNA tutorials (which, I think is great as you get to make your own games as you go and that keeps you interested -- talk about gamification of learning!) and the help of a C# Design Patterns book (a terrible choice for a beginner, but you might as well learning the right way at the start). In fact, the way I see it, by peddling this view of programming we're loosing something, something that I can't define and yet I can feel as being fundamental. Perhaps people (kids?) will develop an idea that programming is childish and when they grow up they will grow out of programming as well? I'm not sure. Actually, I remember a great experience toying around and programming Crysis through CryEngine 2 Sandbox editor at age 12, where you could design flowgraph for AI movement (enter this, go there, etc.) and other cool things, and the awesome thing was that you got this immediate feedback and could, for example, observe awesome battles between AIs. This could be a fascinating teaching route to explore, whereby students learn by programming existing (or new!) games in something like UE4 with blueprints, considering most people go into CS with the mindset of "I just want to make games, man" so we should try tapping into that mine.
- myhf 11y ago
  I think associating programming with childish blocks is less of a risk than associating programming with menial, simple, useless tasks. Most people never get a chance to develop a feel for iteration and emergent behavior, because they have to struggle with typing and syntax and tabs/spaces/braces holy wars. With Scratch, I can get 9-year-old with no math or typing skills to make an interactive system with realistic physics, that keeps iterating and simulating even when they let go of it. Some kids might treat that as an art class, and grow up thinking of programming as unapproachably childish instead of unapproachably strange. But others will remember learning a little about iteration, and object property accessing, and physics, and emergent behavior, instead of learning a lot about syntax.
- skybrian 11y ago
  There are certainly other ways to do visual languages and it's worth experimenting with them. But this visual approach seems to work well so why not refine it?
copsarebastards 11y ago
This isn't the first time something like this has been tried, and my criticism of it is the same: this isn't really "programming". When you create a learning language, you're inherently taking a bunch of concepts from modern programming, and you're dividing them into two groups: things that you think are necessary for what the student is doing to be called programming, and things that aren't necessary. Somewhere along the line, Snap, and its precursor, Scratch, decided that text wasn't a necessary part of programming. The motivation for this decision seems to have been that they think that text is part of what scares some people away from programming. That may or may not be true, I don't know. But what I do know is that if you aren't using text, I have a hard time describing what you're doing as programming. Sure, a lot of programming concepts can be expressed visually. But rapidly these visual representations break down when you try to build anything complicated out of them, because you start having to do more complicated things along the way. Version control is tied to text: you can't revert part of your changes to a flow diagram easily. As you learn more about a problem domain, you decide you want to rename a variable? Good luck with find/replace without text. Or are you just going to drop the concept of a variable? What's the visual representation of a type? The result might be that you get people interested in something you're calling programming, but their interest is based on false premises. When you finally expose them to actual programming, all the parts that were too scary to show them to begin with are all there. All you're doing is losing them later. I think that BASIC did a much better job of this back in the day. It gave you a lot up-front, and to do this, some of the concepts weren't ideally scalable, but there wasn't really any upper limit to what you could do with BASIC. The result is that all those scary concepts were there, but you didn't have to confront them all at once. Eventually you'd have to learn that, say, turtle graphics aren't the way we really draw things, but until you learned that, you could still do everything you wanted, it was just a little slow. I got all the way up to writing code for real, full-sized robots in BASIC (albeit by that time I had started learning C++). There's nothing that would have stopped me from writing real-world applications in BASIC (and indeed, many real-world applications are built in BASIC). It may be that Snap or one of its ancestors will someday reach the level where you could build a real-world application in it. I hope that happens, and I hope it makes programming accessible to everyone. But for now, I don't think that what Snap teaches is really programming.
- 11y ago
unscaled 11y ago
I like the idea of visual programming as a way of making introductory programming classes more engaging and draw kids into programming. But it's definitely not a new concept, and many kids in previous generations have had LOGO classes. I have a major problem with this post's attitude though. In the same way LOGO classes did not make programming more accessible to "non-White/Asian males", block language like Snap wouldn't. Girls don't need the programming language to be pink and pretty so that they could properly learn program. In fact, the period where the female programmers in the US had the largest representation was exactly the period of inaccessible beasts which had to be fed machine-code instructions directly in plugboards and switches. I know it's hard to tell from the black-and-white photos today, but the ENIAC switchboards were definitely not pink. What drives women out of technology today is that they are discouraged by society to be enthusiastic about computers and Math early on, and when they become older and do want to try, they find a largely-male field with people who had early access to programming having the upper hand on them, and often treating them with prejudice. The reason black and hispanic people are underrepresented in programming (in the US, of course - in other countries that would be other ethnic groups, but railing against Americanocentrism is out of fashion I guess) is that they are provided a much lower level of education in general. The best way to increase the number of female programmers is to simply encourage young girls to program by not making it 'a boys' thing', without segregating them into programming in visual block languages which would earn them (undeserved, but very real) scorn later on. The best way to encourage more ethnic diversity is to raise the level of education in the schools the go to, as well as dealing with the socio-economic problems that make them disadvantaged compared to their peers. As much as I like the idea in general, introducing Snap as a language specifically targeted for 'underrepresented demographics' is only going to strengthen the misconception that these demographics are 'less smarter' than the White and Asian boys who ace programming without needing all these fancy visual blocks.
- skybrian 11y ago
  It seems like there must be some other reason why you're bothered by this project, because these just look like rationalizations: First of all, why do you think Snap is dumbed down? It's a language that has macros (special forms) and even call with continuation. It seems like that's rather advanced stuff. Second, as I remember it, Logo was pretty fun and reasonably popular. It seems like it was a success. Scratch is also a success. Why not build on success? Third, the Snap UI is not pink. Nothing in Snap's UI says it's specifically targeted towards anyone other than beginning programmers. The researchers say they're interested in reaching minorities. As you say, it's a tough problem, and it's likely that a good programming environment won't solve it alone. But that's why they're putting together a curriculum for teachers. And who knows, maybe learning about computer programming might get kids interested in math, rather the other way around? This project is at the very least harmless. They're going to do the experiment and if it doesn't work, they'll make adjustments or maybe rethink their approach. Maybe think a bit deeper about why you really find it objectionable?
bloaf 11y ago
Consider middle/high school Spanish classes. There are a diverse mix of people in them and they are taught by a diverse range of people with all sorts of colorful textbooks and methods. Do most students come away from those classes with any long-lasting appreciation for Spanish? Do they retain any useful information? In my experience, most people took it because a foreign language was required, and promptly forgot all but the basic tourist phrases once they got to college. Basically, I think we shouldn't be setting our sights too high with regards to programming education. It certainly is possible for everyone to learn, just like every other language. But life is short, and it isn't reasonable to expect everyone to be interested in speaking math to computers, just like it isn't reasonable to expect everyone to be interested in speaking Spanish to people.
jastr 11y ago
A lot of the comments on this thread seem to find these drag ’n drop, “dumbed down” tools not only useless but also harmful to future programmers. Did you write the compiler your code is running on? What about malloc? What do you mean you’re using “abstractions”… shouldn’t you be writing in assembly right now so you can tell the computer exactly what it should be doing? Programming is not about typing text into computers, it’s about getting computers to do what you want. When we say that in 15 years, everyone will be programming, it doesn’t mean everyone will be writing C code. We mean everyone will be better at telling their computers what they want them to do, and this is most certainly a step in that direction.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  Not all abstractions are equal, however. The people that don't think this kind of environment don't dislike it because it's an abstraction, they just don't think it's a beneficial abstraction.

66 points by jherritz 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

"This is the kind of class that attracts students who actively want to take it: students who are already interested in programming." I would love programming to be more accessible and a much more diverse community, but I think people are starting far from the problem. Look at the percentage of K-8 teachers teaching Math and Science that did not major in their field. Now look at the ratio of female to male teachers in both K-8 and pre-K. We are not providing proper role models in the math and sciences since the teachers teaching the subject didn't consider them in detail enough to major in them. Neither are we providing proper role models for both sexes professionally interacting. The problem is long standing by the time students pick majors and their perception of STEM is long formed. Their are reasons you have to be already interested to succeed and it has to do when "already" happened.

jherritz 11y ago
You make some very valid points. There is an underpowered feedback loop here that would take years to amplify naturally. That's why it's important to have programs like BJC right now. It helps tilt the scales without relying on changes to the composition of the teaching field.
- breakforge 11y ago
  > It helps tilt the scales without relying on changes to the composition of the teaching field. What's are the initials BJC? My searching turned up nothing that immediately fits the context, and I'd like to read more
  - sudont 11y ago
    http://bjc.berkeley.edu/ http://bjc.berkeley.edu/ It's in the article. "Snap is the programming language for UC Berkeley’s Beauty and Joy of Computing curriculum (BJC), which aims to bring introductory CS to a wider range of students than the typical intro to programming does. BJC is also used at the high school level, and is a curriculum for the new AP Computer Science: Principles test."
    - breakforge 11y ago
      Thanks. I was under the impression that it was some channel for experimenting with education. Whoops.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

shiggerino 11y ago

If we're going to have drag-and-drop programming, why not do dataflow, which is where it really comes into its own? Of course if you want to churn out code monkeys for conventional languages, this is great, but if you want to expand people's minds, not so much.

jherritz 11y ago
Do you have any thoughts about how you would implement dataflow programming in Snap? I know I'd be excited to see Snap hooked into some of the really interesting streaming data work we're doing at MIOsoft (beyond just the storage of projects).
dyarosla 11y ago
There is a big issue with teaching to code and that is if you want it to scale and have teachers introduce kids to coding, you have to make sure that the material taught is very in line with core requirements. Computer science and coding curriculum is not set in stone yet, but where it's going covers the most common language constructs of today, like loops, conditionals and procedural coding. It is a stretch to show how learning to create dataflow programs maps to procedural understanding and algorithms. Moreover, there's very few general purpose dataflow environments that are widely accepted in computer science, and so learning dataflow won't necessarily ease the transition for students to later learn modern programming languages. TL;DR For a layperson, the association between dataflow and 'real coding' is very weak. For a programmer on the other hand, the association may be less weak, but the skill may nonetheless not be applicable to most real world applications.
- harperlee 11y ago
  > For a layperson, the association between dataflow and 'real coding' is very weak. Excel is basically a dataflow. You can avoid talking about loops with maps, that can be understood immediately with excel tables. Something like Excel that does not divide so strongly between cells and VBA should be ideal. Resolver One was very interesting. That's the approach that I think it's the best: Excel is right now how people that need sort-of programming but don't program bridge the gap. It's huge. It's everywhere. And it's _VISUAL_. Perhaps a simplified Excel for educational purposes is the ideal way to expose people to programming, formal thinking, systems thinking, functional definitions, etc. And, when they jump to real-life Excel, and get culture shock, perhaps they keep using that original program that they were taught. Perhaps there is a viable startup here....

evolve2k 11y ago

I love this progression and think it's exactly right for high school and entry college programs. Conceptually when do people think is the right time to switch from one of these visually languages (optimized for asthetic and visual approachability) across to text based coding? What key 'ah ha' moments for the new student define when they are ready to cross over?

jherritz 11y ago
I'm confident that is still an open question. That said, the creator of Snap would probably say there is no need to transition - ever. All Snap code can be viewed and edited as text. It's not an either/or decision, in other words.
analog31 11y ago
I think the cross-over occurs when the graphical language becomes too cumbersome due to ergonomics or readability. I have only seen two graphical languages -- Scratch and LabVIEW. I think that these languages may be easier to learn, but are not more readable than text based languages, and vastly less ergonomic. To this day, my eyeballs and carpal tunnels ache just thinking about LabVIEW. My guess is that the corresponding ah-ha moment is when programs grow to where they depend on the benefits of modularity.
- striking 11y ago
  LabVIEW makes the syntactic stuff a lot easier, but as soon as you want a modular program or you want to create something polished, it stops working the way you want it to. And I'd argue that it's because LabVIEW is meant only for R&D purposes. It does work fairly well for FPGA-based applications but that's often because those programs are fairly compact and uncomplicated when done right. I wish there were a more modular and useful version of LabVIEW (or G or whatever the language is called) because I'd like to use something like that. Not having to worry about execution order is a marvelous thing, and it really transforms the way one thinks.
  - analog31 11y ago

jherritz 11y ago

It looks like there was a nice discussion not long ago on Hacker News about Snap as a programming language. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9591460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9591460

davidhariri 11y ago

Programming is already for everyone!

phren0logy 11y ago

Interesting point from that page is that Brian Harvey (http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/ http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/), one of the last hold-outs who was teaching intro Computer Science with Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (at Berkeley), is involved as a contributor. Here are the materials from his excellent SICP course: * Videos - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmYqShvVDh4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmYqShvVDh4 * Supporting docs - http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/sp11/ http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/sp11/ * SICP textbook - http://www.mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html http://www.mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html

brlewis 11y ago
Interesting, but not too surprising. Which syntax looks more like the graphical representation of Snap? f(a, b) (f a b)
tygorius 11y ago
Harvey is really a force for good when it comes to making programming and computer science topics accessible to more people. In addition to SICP and SNAP work, he was also a force behind UCB Logo and wound up writing a three volume introduction to computer science for high schoolers. People can read them online at https://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/logo.html https://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/logo.html

kmenzie 11y ago

I really like snap and scratch, and I think they're part of the right approach, but I can already here "those kids" (you know who they are) talking about how whichever students had to take the snap class were dumber, and couldn't really code, and weren't 'real cs majors'-- probably before lecture in some early college cs class while the snap kids are sitting around them. To be clear, I don't have a solution to this part of the problem, but I think that moment (listening to 'those kids' talk about who the 'real hackers' are) can lose as many non-typical engineers as the moment when they have to install their first IDE

quadrature 11y ago
Well if everyone took snap as part of the curriculum then you probably won't have that problem. You will always have varying competencies in education.
analog31 11y ago
The younger you get kids, the better, before they have learned those sorts of stereotypes. Also, at a younger age, programming doesn't have to be taught as "computer science." It can just be an activity. For me, it was "real programmers don't use BASIC." I let my productivity speak for itself, in things like student research projects.

kazinator 11y ago

> The thing is, the students who are succeeding with this approach to computer science education are primarily white and Asian men. No other demographic is even close. So, cue solution: some toy visual programming language that cognitively challenged (i.e. not white or Asian male) persons can understand and work with? How can people who are trying to address social discrepancies (sensitive types) fail to clue in to the possibility an obvious angle on their message? (Of course, I have all seasons of Daria in my phone, so that helps with the cynicism. La la la LA la!) Maybe they should just say, "we have courses in a nice, fun graphical computer language that doesn't require typing in program text coded in a cryptic notation. We believe it appeals to a wide range of personalities and temperaments, including ones that are not commonly associated with people in the engineering fields". That already contains enough of a stereotype about at least one group; no need to get into naming races and sexes.

TsukasaUjiie 11y ago

The Australian National University teaches a course in Snap aimed at non computer science majors. Whilst I was originally skeptical of the language and thought it might be "babyish" I was pleasantly surprised to see how expressive it was. Most of the labs use a javascript-y like object model behind the scenes and provide useful functional programming primitives (map/fold/etc <3). The response from the students thus far has been pretty great. Some of them are looking into taking more programming courses as part of their degrees; often very separate from computer science. I'm not sure if we would have gotten this result chucking them straight into a CS101 course. https://artofcomputing.cecs.anu.edu.au/ https://artofcomputing.cecs.anu.edu.au/

FD3SA 11y ago

This insane obsession with making programming the "everyman" skill boggles the mind. "Programming", better described as applied mathematics, is not and has never been an accessible profession. Just because you have no trouble taking medication, doesn't mean you are qualified to be a doctor. Just because you use a smartphone, doesn't mean you are qualified to commit to the Linux kernel. I am constantly fascinated by attempts to frame computer science as a trade similar to bricklaying or plumbing. It really could not be further from such work. Computer science is the application of mathematical logic, which by definition, is out of the reach of the majority of students. One look at mathematical aptitude test scores for the general public will disabuse you of the notion that everyone can program. At best, you need to be at least one standard deviation above the mean in mathematical ability to be a competent computer scientist. At worst, factoring in global competition in an unregulated profession, you need to be two to three standard deviations above the mean. Assuming a normal distribution, that's about 2.5% of the population. So, why are we lying to kids with promises of Google jobs? If they're that good at math, they'll know it. They'll be autodidacts, and will use the plethora of resources already available to reach their potential. I'm all for easy to use graphical programming languages, as they truly help to visualize algorithms in a tangible way. But selling it along with an "everyone can program and make money doing it!" promise is absurd.

chrisrudy502 11y ago
Just because you aren't qualified to commit to the Linux kernel doesn't mean you aren't qualified to use computer languages for fun and profit.
pika24 11y ago
This is silly. Learning to program is learning a new language, learning to make something. It's being creative, persistent, and paying strong attention to detail. It takes time, energy, passion, blood, sweat, and tears, but is a skill that can be acquired and honed.
G650 11y ago
Disagree completely. You are stuck in the old world mentality.
11y ago

pmalynin 11y ago

I'm not exactly sure what is the fascination with these blocky-looking, dumbed down, drag-and-drop languages that look the same? First code that I wrote was in QBASIC at age 10 (I'm 19 right now), which I found to be very accessible and then later moved on to learning C# with the help of various XNA tutorials (which, I think is great as you get to make your own games as you go and that keeps you interested -- talk about gamification of learning!) and the help of a C# Design Patterns book (a terrible choice for a beginner, but you might as well learning the right way at the start). In fact, the way I see it, by peddling this view of programming we're loosing something, something that I can't define and yet I can feel as being fundamental. Perhaps people (kids?) will develop an idea that programming is childish and when they grow up they will grow out of programming as well? I'm not sure. Actually, I remember a great experience toying around and programming Crysis through CryEngine 2 Sandbox editor at age 12, where you could design flowgraph for AI movement (enter this, go there, etc.) and other cool things, and the awesome thing was that you got this immediate feedback and could, for example, observe awesome battles between AIs. This could be a fascinating teaching route to explore, whereby students learn by programming existing (or new!) games in something like UE4 with blueprints, considering most people go into CS with the mindset of "I just want to make games, man" so we should try tapping into that mine.

myhf 11y ago
I think associating programming with childish blocks is less of a risk than associating programming with menial, simple, useless tasks. Most people never get a chance to develop a feel for iteration and emergent behavior, because they have to struggle with typing and syntax and tabs/spaces/braces holy wars. With Scratch, I can get 9-year-old with no math or typing skills to make an interactive system with realistic physics, that keeps iterating and simulating even when they let go of it. Some kids might treat that as an art class, and grow up thinking of programming as unapproachably childish instead of unapproachably strange. But others will remember learning a little about iteration, and object property accessing, and physics, and emergent behavior, instead of learning a lot about syntax.
skybrian 11y ago
There are certainly other ways to do visual languages and it's worth experimenting with them. But this visual approach seems to work well so why not refine it?

copsarebastards 11y ago

This isn't the first time something like this has been tried, and my criticism of it is the same: this isn't really "programming". When you create a learning language, you're inherently taking a bunch of concepts from modern programming, and you're dividing them into two groups: things that you think are necessary for what the student is doing to be called programming, and things that aren't necessary. Somewhere along the line, Snap, and its precursor, Scratch, decided that text wasn't a necessary part of programming. The motivation for this decision seems to have been that they think that text is part of what scares some people away from programming. That may or may not be true, I don't know. But what I do know is that if you aren't using text, I have a hard time describing what you're doing as programming. Sure, a lot of programming concepts can be expressed visually. But rapidly these visual representations break down when you try to build anything complicated out of them, because you start having to do more complicated things along the way. Version control is tied to text: you can't revert part of your changes to a flow diagram easily. As you learn more about a problem domain, you decide you want to rename a variable? Good luck with find/replace without text. Or are you just going to drop the concept of a variable? What's the visual representation of a type? The result might be that you get people interested in something you're calling programming, but their interest is based on false premises. When you finally expose them to actual programming, all the parts that were too scary to show them to begin with are all there. All you're doing is losing them later. I think that BASIC did a much better job of this back in the day. It gave you a lot up-front, and to do this, some of the concepts weren't ideally scalable, but there wasn't really any upper limit to what you could do with BASIC. The result is that all those scary concepts were there, but you didn't have to confront them all at once. Eventually you'd have to learn that, say, turtle graphics aren't the way we really draw things, but until you learned that, you could still do everything you wanted, it was just a little slow. I got all the way up to writing code for real, full-sized robots in BASIC (albeit by that time I had started learning C++). There's nothing that would have stopped me from writing real-world applications in BASIC (and indeed, many real-world applications are built in BASIC). It may be that Snap or one of its ancestors will someday reach the level where you could build a real-world application in it. I hope that happens, and I hope it makes programming accessible to everyone. But for now, I don't think that what Snap teaches is really programming.

11y ago

unscaled 11y ago

I like the idea of visual programming as a way of making introductory programming classes more engaging and draw kids into programming. But it's definitely not a new concept, and many kids in previous generations have had LOGO classes. I have a major problem with this post's attitude though. In the same way LOGO classes did not make programming more accessible to "non-White/Asian males", block language like Snap wouldn't. Girls don't need the programming language to be pink and pretty so that they could properly learn program. In fact, the period where the female programmers in the US had the largest representation was exactly the period of inaccessible beasts which had to be fed machine-code instructions directly in plugboards and switches. I know it's hard to tell from the black-and-white photos today, but the ENIAC switchboards were definitely not pink. What drives women out of technology today is that they are discouraged by society to be enthusiastic about computers and Math early on, and when they become older and do want to try, they find a largely-male field with people who had early access to programming having the upper hand on them, and often treating them with prejudice. The reason black and hispanic people are underrepresented in programming (in the US, of course - in other countries that would be other ethnic groups, but railing against Americanocentrism is out of fashion I guess) is that they are provided a much lower level of education in general. The best way to increase the number of female programmers is to simply encourage young girls to program by not making it 'a boys' thing', without segregating them into programming in visual block languages which would earn them (undeserved, but very real) scorn later on. The best way to encourage more ethnic diversity is to raise the level of education in the schools the go to, as well as dealing with the socio-economic problems that make them disadvantaged compared to their peers. As much as I like the idea in general, introducing Snap as a language specifically targeted for 'underrepresented demographics' is only going to strengthen the misconception that these demographics are 'less smarter' than the White and Asian boys who ace programming without needing all these fancy visual blocks.

skybrian 11y ago
It seems like there must be some other reason why you're bothered by this project, because these just look like rationalizations: First of all, why do you think Snap is dumbed down? It's a language that has macros (special forms) and even call with continuation. It seems like that's rather advanced stuff. Second, as I remember it, Logo was pretty fun and reasonably popular. It seems like it was a success. Scratch is also a success. Why not build on success? Third, the Snap UI is not pink. Nothing in Snap's UI says it's specifically targeted towards anyone other than beginning programmers. The researchers say they're interested in reaching minorities. As you say, it's a tough problem, and it's likely that a good programming environment won't solve it alone. But that's why they're putting together a curriculum for teachers. And who knows, maybe learning about computer programming might get kids interested in math, rather the other way around? This project is at the very least harmless. They're going to do the experiment and if it doesn't work, they'll make adjustments or maybe rethink their approach. Maybe think a bit deeper about why you really find it objectionable?

bloaf 11y ago

Consider middle/high school Spanish classes. There are a diverse mix of people in them and they are taught by a diverse range of people with all sorts of colorful textbooks and methods. Do most students come away from those classes with any long-lasting appreciation for Spanish? Do they retain any useful information? In my experience, most people took it because a foreign language was required, and promptly forgot all but the basic tourist phrases once they got to college. Basically, I think we shouldn't be setting our sights too high with regards to programming education. It certainly is possible for everyone to learn, just like every other language. But life is short, and it isn't reasonable to expect everyone to be interested in speaking math to computers, just like it isn't reasonable to expect everyone to be interested in speaking Spanish to people.

jastr 11y ago

A lot of the comments on this thread seem to find these drag ’n drop, “dumbed down” tools not only useless but also harmful to future programmers. Did you write the compiler your code is running on? What about malloc? What do you mean you’re using “abstractions”… shouldn’t you be writing in assembly right now so you can tell the computer exactly what it should be doing? Programming is not about typing text into computers, it’s about getting computers to do what you want. When we say that in 15 years, everyone will be programming, it doesn’t mean everyone will be writing C code. We mean everyone will be better at telling their computers what they want them to do, and this is most certainly a step in that direction.

dragonwriter 11y ago
Not all abstractions are equal, however. The people that don't think this kind of environment don't dislike it because it's an abstraction, they just don't think it's a beneficial abstraction.