Re: Lua, Robotics, and a 13 year old...

[Matthew Wild <mwild1@...>]

On 25 July 2010 21:53, Ralph Hempel <rhempel@bmts.com> wrote:
> Everett L Williams II wrote:
>>
>> Mike,
>>
>> Start him on Logo. It is not a children's language any more, and it was
>> specifically designed for simple robotics, certainly in the virtual mode,
>> but also in the real. I would not start my worst enemy on a functional
>> language like lua, however much I may like it myself.
>
> I'll take issue with that by noting that the parent or mentor is
> really in control of how much of the language is exposed to the student.
>
> You don't have to use the functional aspects of Lua to get good use
> out of it.
>

I also think it's unnecessary to have children in a sandbox until
someone decides they're "ready" for a real language. I may be biased,
in that I learnt programming independently when 9 (QBASIC's online
help for the win...) - but I see absolutely no reason that a real
language can't be used by youngsters (or anyone whose ultimate goal is
to be programming in real languages).

Sure, Logo gives a nice introduction to the *concept* of programming,
and it's fun to see children realising that yes - they can actually be
in control of the computer/robot, and it's not hard. But someone
wanting to actually take up programming is long past that point
already.

I know I would rather have learnt Lua as a first language than QBASIC
if I had the choice, too bad Lua 5.1 wasn't around back then :)

Matthew