Python for Kids

[Glyph Lefkowitz]

"Jeff Massung" <jmassung at magpiesystems.com> writes:

> Not to stray from promoting Python (which I love), but maybe starting with
> Hypercard would be better? Easy to code (but many things can be done), and
> the graphics and sound are already there.

No.

I've (a) been a child learning to program, (b) taught children how to
program, and (c) written a nontrivial application in HyperCard.

Every single kid who learned HyperCard (especially me) and tried to go
on to bigger and better things with it was immediately frustrated by
its limitations.  There was a long and painful process of unlearning
everything they'd ever done with HyperCard to actually be able to do
anything useful.

It's also a very bad way of thinking about programming -- the
HyperTalk reference lists hundreds of "commands" that are bindings to
specific functionality, rather than methods or functions; there's no
good way to define a new kind of class, let alone inherit from an
existing one; there are scads of subtly special syntaxes, the language
is hard-wired into a vastly substandard development environment, and
Apple has no intention AFAICT of supporting this under OSX.
Abstraction?  Hah!

Python, on the other hand, has very few rules, no special syntaxes,
and many of the modules are written in python.  To be honest, I've not
tried to teach any kids to program in Python yet, but I *have* taught
third-graders to program in C++, and although it was slower to get
going, it was more satisfying in the endthan teaching them HyperTalk.
I imagine Python would be a dream compared to either.

No offense to the poster of this message, but HyperCard was what
taught me never to rely on commercial software :-) and I really feel
strongly about discouraging its use (no matter what the context)

and-now-java-has-reinforced-the-lesson-most-painful-ly y'rs, glyph

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