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

[Nathaniel Lewis <linux.robotdude@...>]

What would you have me learn then?  I know how to use a computer and how
to program. I like working with them and I consider robotics a decent
head start in computers for college.  I never have considered age an
excuse for thinking someone is incompetent in a subject.
					Nathaniel  

On Mon, 2010-07-26 at 10:11 -0500, Everett L Williams II wrote:
> Nathaniel,
> 
> You aren't even representative of most regular programmers, much less
> representative of most 13 year olds, and you haven't the social
> knowledge to know that you aren't typical or even reasonable in this
> case. I am glad that you can do these things, but I would hate to get
> hold of code that you have written, not because it won't be good or
> even genius, but because it is likely that you are the only one that
> will be able to work with the code. When you program in the way that
> you describe at the age you describe, it is more like a tropism than
> it is organized behavior. I wouldn't wish having C++ as a native
> language on my worst enemy. It is a monstrous kluge, allowing at least
> a dozen ways to do almost anything, and many times completely
> unreadable by anyone but the author, and often not by the author after
> any reasonable time away from the code. I remember being an Assembler
> code guru in IBM 360/370 code, but it did not take me long to figure
> out that writing Assembler was a self-defeating exercise. Without the
> most careful of techniques, C++ can be the same thing. As with writing
> Assembler on modern machines with dynamic register sets, very few
> people can write code that is as efficient as a good compiler,
> especially not for more than a few lines. I suspect that eventually,
> things like C++ will fall into that same category. You will note that
> one of the chief difficulties in making any language such as lua
> relevant is finding ways to wrap all the junk that is out there in C
> and C++. As a result, programming is stuck in a rut around C and C++,
> and hardware is getting far ahead of software just because of those
> issues. I don't doubt that your facility in such things will make you
> highly employable in the present and the near future, but it will not
> help increase the ease or even the efficiency of implementing ideas in
> programs. Languages like lua need to be bootstrapped in themselves,
> and need tools to automatically and efficiently wrap the various
> pieces of C/C++ that must be dealt with to get things done. In the
> meantime, the tendency to make lua an appendage of C++ is, IMO,
> something that should be discouraged.
> 
> Everett L.(Rett) Williams II
> 
> 
> 
> Nathaniel Lewis wrote: 
> > It all depends on how hard the kid is going to try honestly.  I am 17
> > and I had been programming AVRs in C++ for two years at 13.  Also what
> > kind of platforms are you going to be using?  I saw NXT, and there is
> > pbLua for it.  What others were you thinking of?  AVR, PIC, other?
> > 				Nathaniel
> > 
> > On Mon, 2010-07-26 at 01:16 +0800, KHMan wrote:
> >   
> > > Mike McGonagle wrote:
> > >     
> > > > A friend of mine has a 13 year old kid who is interested in Robots. I
> > > > am wanting to suggest that he learn a programming language (Lua in
> > > > particular) and learn a bit about building a computer (as Robots are
> > > > specialized computers). As Lua appears to be a language designed for
> > > > embedded systems, I was wondering if anyone out there could give me
> > > > some links to sites that deal with Robotic projects that are using
> > > > Lua, so that I could pass them along to the kid to encourage him to
> > > > learn Lua. Also, as a related topic, if there are any projects that
> > > > are dealing with AI, that would be great, too. That would be something
> > > > else for him down the road.
> > > >       
> > > It's the wrong "embedded", I think. Lua's emphasis is on embedding 
> > > into software programs, e.g. like VisualBasic in Excel or Word, 
> > > but much better. Not the hardware embedded as in MCUs.
> > > 
> > > There are Lua for microcontrollers, but they are not really 
> > > 13-year-old-proof.
> > > 
> > > So there's the no-brainer Lego stuff. But cheap servos are so very 
> > > attractive these days, however going the non-nicely-packaged route 
> > > would be a bit more difficult, though there are things like 
> > > Arduino or a BASIC-based board to make things easier.
> > > 
> > >     
> > 
> > 
> >   
>