Why Johnny Can't Code 686
GoCanes writes "Salon has an article named 'Why Johnny Can't Code,' an interesting examination of the dearth of line programming languages available today. At first I wanted to read this and say aha, here's a simple line oriented language that's available through open source, but after reading the article I couldn't find any. And being an old fart, I remember the days spent with edlin and basic."
Re:passworded article (Score:2, Informative)
Absolute nonsense (Score:5, Informative)
apt-get install \
bash \
python \
gambas2 \
kturtle \
fp-compiler fp-units-base \
php5-cli
The reason children don't code (if that is even true, as it's a completely unsubstantiated assertion) is because they don't want to.
I started programming when I was ten, and I did it by hand-converting Z80 assembly language to machine code and then used BASIC poke commands to write them into memory. I had to work hard to scrape a C compiler from somewhere and that was heaven.
Today it is a million times easier to write a program if you wanted to. Blame ease-of-use culture; blame video games; blame stupid parents; but blaming the lack of access to programming languages is ridiculous to say the least.
Re:passworded article (Score:5, Informative)
here is command line basic (Score:2, Informative)
BWBasic? (Score:3, Informative)
FreeBASIC... (Score:5, Informative)
BTW: The article is by SF writer David Brin (Score:4, Informative)
Wait... (Score:3, Informative)
There are even languages developed solely to interest kids in programming.
http://www.kidsprogramminglanguage.com/ [kidsprogra...nguage.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_(software) [wikipedia.org]
I'm sure there's more out there, but Alice was the one I remembered, and found KPL on the way.
No, there are no more barriers to programming than any other science.
Re:Why Line-Oriented? (Score:3, Informative)
this is opposed to statement oriented where all parts have to be part of the single statment, usally multiple lines but with a statement ender, or a block oriented language that has begining and ending tags for the block.
Re:Absolute nonsense (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Absolute nonsense (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Kids today...... :-) (Score:3, Informative)
None of those are line-oriented programming languages. They are block-oriented and some of them are object-oriented programming languages. A line-oriented programming language looks like this:
A block-oriented programming language looks like this:
And an object-oriented one looks something like this:
I realize that there's easier ways to do it with Java than the one shown, but as many in Slashdot have said, the guy who doesn't produce code that makes a computer science professor get an orgams by just reading it is not going to get a job - I'm talking to you, whoever it was that said that using a goto results in automatic rejection of the applicant.
So, anyway: if you were a kid, you might write the two-line Basic script, or even the C one; but would you bother with Java, or would you give up ? And more importantly, since kids mostly learn from other people's code at the beginning: which code is the easiest to reverse engineer ?
Re:Why Line-Oriented? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:prof.dr.Edsger W.Dijkstra Is An Idiot (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, I think he overstated the case against BASIC (although I believe BASIC was much worse when he wrote that than by the time Commodore came along), but he's probably one of the top ten or so computer science figures of all time, along with John Bachus, John McCarthy, Tony Hoare, John Von Neuman, Alan Turing and a few others.