Re: Beginner to programming. References to understand terms.

[Russell Haley <russ.haley@...>]

On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 11:27 AM, nobody <nobody+lua-list@afra-berlin.de> wrote:
> On 2017-04-26 19:55, Dirk Laurie wrote:
>
> (sorry for the delay)
>
>> 2017-04-26 5:18 GMT+02:00 nobody <nobody+lua-list@afra-berlin.de>:
>>
>>> I'd say that if you have a good idea of what you want & have looked
>>> at how love2d is structured, it's feasible to get a runnable
>>> prototype of a beginner-friendly environment in about 1-2 hours.
>>> (Yes, it really is very hackable & close to usable.)  After a few
>>> more hours of polishing it should be in acceptable shape to try it
>>> on real beginners.  (And then you improve it over the next
>>> weeks/months – better error messages, …)
>>
>>
>> Is this a description of something you are actually working on?
>
>
> Short answer:  No.
>
> Long answer:  Well, something like that is "simmering" in the background,
> but I think such an environment without a tutorial or at least good
> documentation is worthless (for the purpose of teaching beginners), and that
> would take much more time.  And then there's also this:
>
>   http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/
>
> which is closer to what I'd like to have, and if you take those ideas
> and compare them, you'll see that this "beginner-friendly" environment
> isn't all that friendly.  ('"Properly" teaching programming/CS' is on my
> "long-term todo list", so I'm slowly accumulating stuff that will be
> helpful for reaching this.  But that will still take a long time.)
>
>> Some time ago I tried to produce something of the kind […]. When I
>> tried running it now, it wouldn't (Love has made some breaking
>> changes since 2011).
>
>
> I had a look at your code.  The history approach is interesting, the
> rest is… meh (primarily quite large).  But have this!
>
> diff -urw vilua.A.love/main.lua vilua.B.love/main.lua
> --- vilua.A.love/main.lua       2011-11-20 21:44:21.000000000 +0100
> +++ vilua.B.love/main.lua       2017-04-27 17:42:23.000000005 +0200
> #
> # Some time back they split love.graphics, adding love.window.  They
> # also renamed some functions.  I think this is the only necessary
> # change:
> #
> @@ -30,3 +30,3 @@
>  function love.load()
> -   love.graphics.setCaption('Lua with graphics')
> +   love.window.setTitle('Lua with graphics')
>     deg = math.pi/180
> #
> # I don't know if this change is necessary, but there's a designated
> # function for that purpose:
> #
> @@ -50 +50 @@
> -function signal_quit() love.event.push "q" end
> +signal_quit = love.event.quit
> #
> # Not bored enough to fix it crashing non-reversibly on any error.
> # (Also don't know if that's new or always was like that.)
> # Try (my favourite) `circle( 100, 100, 50 )` to see what I mean.
>
>> But I can distinctly remember that it took me more than two hours
>
>
> Right, so that estimate probably mostly applies to me.  (I've explored most
> of the necessary features and know how to work around most of the quirks.)
> So the logical conclusion is this:
>
> If anyone wants this ("friendly" REPL and/or (drag&drop?) script runner)
> badly enough and has a good idea of what they want, ping me in about a month
> (most seminar-related work should be through by then), send a spec, and I'll
> build it.  (No fancy stuff like what Bret Victor is doing – that would need
> much more research.)
>
> -- nobody

All these ideas point back to having a "foundation" dedicated to this
sort of thing (i.e. binary distribution, beginner documentation. We
don't need search though. We'll just put a link to Paul Merrells email
address because he knows where it all is! tee hee!). A foundation
would give continuity across the various contributions to these goals
because nobody really wants to do this stuff ALL the time.

Russ