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| Computer Programming Educational Software 20 Questions: |
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Matthew Leverton
Supreme Loser
January 1999
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I always liked the C64 BASIC listings in magazines that were nothing but: 10 I = 49152 20 READ D: IF D = -1 THEN 60 30 POKE I, D 40 I = I + 1 50 GOTO 20 60 SYS 49152 99 END 100 DATA 42,42,42,42,42,42 110 DATA 42,42,42,42,42,42 120 REM LOTS MORE 1000 DATA -1 Every 16th or so byte would be a checksum and if something went wrong, it would blow up. Eventually they got wise and included a machine-code editor so you could just type in the hex numbers directly. Fun times. |
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Neil Walker
Member #210
April 2000
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There was a magazine called 'input' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_Magazine - which was rather good really)when I was a youngster with my spectrum, it must have had over 100 issues (52 turns out according to wikipedia). One recurring thing was a game that was spread over most of the issues and was largely data with checksums, for most of the home computers like spectrum, c64, electron, etc. After the couple of years of collecting turns out the game didn't work Maybe I should scan them in and ocr them while I've still got all the equipment at work... Neil. wii:0356-1384-6687-2022, kart:3308-4806-6002. XBOX:chucklepie |
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JeffTX
Member #9,836
May 2008
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General, and back to the spirit on nonnus29's first post; I remember at least one study that strongly indicated advantages for kids in a computer/software rich environment. Even much later in life, they tend to exhibit higher IQs, clearer thinking, superior problem solving ability. Learning how to program (especially when young) teaches the brain how to think, and may even influence the structure of the brain, physically. Neural pathways are improved and more organized, maybe. What language; definitely NOT basic. I would advocate something more structured. NEIL WALKER: |
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Arthur Kalliokoski
Second in Command
February 2005
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He meant coding with the raw hex bytes as opposed to having mnemonics They all watch too much MSNBC... they get ideas. |
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Bob
Free Market Evangelist
September 2000
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I used QBasic's CALL_ABSOLUTE intrinsic to do interesting work -- |
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nonnus29
Member #2,606
August 2002
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Well I've been playing around with Scintilla. Adding a lexer for a my basic variant looks like it'll be pretty easy. Only Scintilla is kind of an ugly text component. I was checking out the syntax highlighting component in Kate and KDevelop, it's called KParts, but it's not cross platform. Hmmm, Eclipse is SWT which is native and cross platform (SWT) and it has a very nice syntax highlighting component. I'll have to check into that. |
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Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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Quote: I was checking out the syntax highlighting component in Kate and KDevelop, it's called KParts, but it's not cross platform Actually, Kate itself is a KPart, which is a generic plugin framework that KDE provides. I would assume katepart itself uses other kparts to support extra languages, but it would do so by specifying a highlighting and syntax parsing api. -- |
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nonnus29
Member #2,606
August 2002
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You're right, it is katepart. KDE: too many damn k's....
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Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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I'm sure you'll enjoy KDE4 then, no new K things. Now you have Plasma, Phonon, Flake, Solid, Oxygen, Okular, Dolphin, Akonadi, Soprano, Strigi, Eigen, Telepathy, Sonnet, Nepomuk, and ThreadWeaver. Theres probably some I'm forgetting, but that should be most of the new stuff. -- |
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nonnus29
Member #2,606
August 2002
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Thomas Hart said: Maybe as a result of starting off in an incredibly simple environment on an incredibly simple computer, my interest in programming has always been trying to understand a system from top to bottom. The fact that the system I first tried to understand was an entire computer is neither here nor there. I think that whatever you present to the kids should have enough background functionality to allow them to express creativity relatively quickly (which, in my case, was provided by the line/circle drawing commands, text output stuff and keyboard input stuff) but not have so much hardcoded that the child cannot reach a point where nothing that is happening is 'magic'. This comment was stuck in my head. I was thinking about the cpu architecture class I took a while back. In that class we had to program MIPS assembler and run it in a simulator. Then it struck me; compiling the Learning Language (whatever it maybe) to assembler for a virtual machine and execute it in a 'Visual CPU'. Then the student can see the source code, the flowchart, the assembler, and the executing machine. That would be pretty cool. Hell, you'd have to be an idiot to not learn computation with a software package like this! Now I need to hire a team of developers for a year to implement it ==> Profit! |
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Peter Wang
Member #23
April 2000
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Quote: Plasma, Phonon, Flake, Solid, Oxygen, Okular, Dolphin, Akonadi, Soprano, Strigi, Eigen, Telepathy, Sonnet, Nepomuk, and ThreadWeaver. Ugh. More meaningless (and overloaded!) names. I wish software was all named for their purpose, as in KTextEditor, KWebBrowser, KFallingBlocksGame. It might stop some of them growing email clients. And as for this 'Allegro' thing... Oh yeah, the original topic. I still remember the title of the first book from the library which piqued my interest in writing games: 25 Exciting Computer Games in Basic for All Ages. Of course, I had an IBM 386 and not a TRS-80 (whatever that was!) so the BASIC code didn't work directly in QBasic. Which wasn't such a bad thing as it forced me to read the game description, read the code, figure out what it was doing (not always easy with PEEKs and POKEs) and try to port or reimplement the game. If I ever found that book again I'd load up a TRS-80 emulator and enter some of those games and see what they really looked like.
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Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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Quote: Ugh. More meaningless (and overloaded!) names. I wish software was all named for their purpose, as in KTextEditor, KWebBrowser, KFallingBlocksGame. And as for this 'Allegro' thing... KDE already knows this The new fancy names are all just PR crap. And to shut up the "k-name" complainers. Don't think kde didn't hear or care about people's issues. Even long time KDE devs were a little unhappy about both of those issues. Post KDE 4.1, KDE should be a lot simpler, more obvious, and more integrated. Quote: It might stop some of them growing email clients. I think you mean text editors, they had three or more at one point, now they really only have one or two in KDE 4, kate, and kwrite, where kwrite uses katepart in "simple" mode with a much simpler ui. Edit: A little ontopic now, I've been working through some of the google tech talks and I just noticed one in the list that may be relevant. I haven't watched it myself though: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Tcwx-I6Arwk -- |
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Arthur Kalliokoski
Second in Command
February 2005
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Quote: Then it struck me; compiling the Learning Language (whatever it maybe) to assembler for a virtual machine and execute it in a 'Visual CPU'. Then the student can see the source code, the flowchart, the assembler, and the executing machine Did you ever make a .COM program in DOS and run it in graphic mode memory? I was always surprised how few pixels twinkled as data variables changed. They all watch too much MSNBC... they get ideas. |
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nonnus29
Member #2,606
August 2002
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Quote: google tech talks and I just noticed one in the list that may be relevant. Thanks for the link, I just finally had time to watch it. In that video the presenter talks about "Greenfoot" a Java programming environment aimed at 14+ year olds. Pretty cool, although I think it suffers from what Thoms Hart talked about: a lot of functionality hidden in the object oriented framework that hides whats going on behind the scenes and at the lower/lowest machine level. |
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