Is Transcript's English orientation a plus or minus?

[Judy Perry]

Me too!

I've never really understood why we start by teaching the really confusing
stuff and then offer the higher-level languages LAST (AND wonder why we
have horrendous attrition rates...).

It seems much more intuitive to get people to learn the general things in
a visual environment with natural-language like syntax and then transfer
that understanding to the more 'complicated' languages.

I think Decker even published an article in one of the ACM journals about
using HC back in the day for a CS1 course.

Which gets me back to wondering about the demise of the Analytical Engine
he did using HC and, later (ugh!) ToolBook?

Judy

On Tue, 10 Feb 2004, Marty Billingsley wrote:

> This got me thinking that Rev would be a *great* tool for moving
> students *into* the c/c++/java environment.  My 8th graders understand
>  set the visible of button "x" to false
>    and
>  set the label of button "x" to "whatever"
>
> When they get to high school and prepping for the AP exam, which
> is now in java, it would be really nice to be able to equate the
> above statements with:
>  x.visible = false
>    and
>  x.label = "whatever"
> (may not have the syntax exactly right, but you know what I mean)
>
> This would be a gentle introduction to a confusing syntax (okay,
> confusing to those seeing it for the first time :-).  I'm always
> looking for ways to spend less time on syntax and more time on
> the bigger picture (how to design good programs, etc.).