[Edu-sig] Re: Acadmic gender gap (was Thoughts)

[Lee Harr]

>One aspect of today's video games that I think may be somewhat negative, is
>they just blow us away with their breakthrough sophistication.  Some kid
>sitting in front of a Pygame console, manual open, just doesn't feel this 
>is
>the cockpit of the same airplane, or even the same species of vehicle.

So true.

When I first got a computer and found out I could program it, there
was a leap there that "OK... so I can make the computer do pretty
much anything. It's just a simple matter of programming!"  ;o)

But at that point the leap was to Lode Runner and Castle
Wolfenstein, which really is not much different from the leap to
Immersive3D Environment Game o' the Week, but it sure does
look a lot different.

To me it is a question of abstraction.

If you can write code to pick a random color, you can write
code to have a bad guy choose a random target. But try
convincing someone who has been living in a completely
different world for the past week that he needs to be able
to tell a turtle how to make a square before he can create
his own world and you may be in for a tough sale.

Why doesn't it just have a "Make a Square" button?

Because no one wants to make a square.
Because no one is there to click the button.
Because the square is really a circle.

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