[Microbit-Python] What is the goal of micro:bit? ( Was Re: Flat API )

[Michael]

+1

(As you say, I still very much want it to be python-y python :-) )

After all, one of my favourite things is the braces one in __future__ : ...

>>> from __future__ import braces
  File "<stdin>", line 1
SyntaxError: not a chance

:-)


Michael.

On 23 September 2015 at 10:44, Damien George <damien.p.george at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Thanks Michael, that's a great read and good to have a "mission
> statement" to make decisions by.
>
> We do need to remember that Touch Develop and Code Kingdoms provide an
> alternative to (Micro)Python (and MP provides an alternative to them)
> and having alternatives already increases the adoption and use of the
> device.  Some students might find the blockly interface more
> inspiring, while others like Python.  So it's important that we
> provide something *different* (and I think Python is providing a
> little more computer-science rigour than the other offerings).
>
> We must also remember that we're bound by the Python language itself
> -- and the Python way of doing things -- so that places some
> restrictions on API design.
>
> I think though that we can slightly modify our API design to fit
> better with Michael's statement.  I propose:
>
> 1. We replace microbit.pins.p[0-20] with top level names microbit.pin0
> .. microbit.pin20.  This removes a "namespace" level but still keps
> things clean (pin0.write_digital(1) is pretty obvious).
>
> 2. We revert to microbit.button_a and microbit.button_b.
>
> 3. On entering the REPL we execute from microbit import * to make all
> names available.  Then it's very easy for a student to do
> display.print('hello!'), and other things.  We should ensure that
> there are no short names in the microbit namespace that could easily
> clash with other names.
>
> 4. We should have from microbit import * written automatically at the
> start of the script in the editor (currently we have import microbit).
> That way students have immediate access to the functions/objects, but
> they can change that line to import microbit if they want.
>
> I think other decisions, like whether we use read_digital,
> digital_read or set_digital_value, are neither here nor there and
> don't affect the "first impressions" of the device (but still we'll
> try to choose sensible and consistent names).  For the students that
> are hard to reach and engage, as long as the teacher can get them a
> REPL, they can type display.print('hahaha') and get something working,
> I think that's the best we can offer.
>
> Python's learning curve is shallow but long.  And we can make the same
> thing on the microbit: the first thing kids do (display.print) should
> be super easy to do.  And from there it should be a gradual learning
> curve towards more fun and advanced things.  And the learning curve
> should continue for a long time for those more advanced students.  I
> think we can do that.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 10:02 AM, Michael <sparks.m at gmail.com> wrote:
> > [ This email has become a bit longer than I intended but I think it's
> > important to say, since this was a great question, and deserves a proper
> > answer. It's passionately it seems, but certainly isn't critiquing
> anyone or
> > any API! ]
> >
> >> What is the goal of micro:bit?
> >>
> >> Is it to teach 11 year-olds good programming skills?
> >>
> >> Or is it to inspire 11 year-olds with an interest in problem solving,
> STEM
> >> etc.?
> >
> > While I don't think (and I doubt you do either) this is either/or, you're
> > right, there is a trade off.
> >
> > The goal of micro:bit is very much the latter. To INSPIRE a generation.
> > Quite literally.
> >
> > Why?
> >
> > Over the past 10 years the numbers of children taking computing in the UK
> > dropped dramatically. At A-Level - where they should be able to come out
> of
> > school with useful skills (I know I did) - esp if they get an A or a B -
> the
> > numbers dropped below 4000 children nationally taking A-Level. Out of
> those,
> > less than 200 were young ladies, and out of those less than 50 got grade
> A
> > or B at A-Level. (ie more women at the Django Girls track at pycon UK
> gained
> > useful skills than young ladies as recently as 2013 - which is when I
> last
> > crunched the stats. (I've got graphs that show this if people are really
> > interested)
> >
> > There are improvements across the board since 2013, and the curriculum is
> > there to teach those good skills.
> >
> > The micro:bit is NOT there to replace the curriculum, or teachers. It is
> > designed very heavily with the start of Key Stage 3 in mind - both in
> > computing but in design technology, science and textiles as well. (Key
> Stage
> > three is the first three years of seconday school for those like me who
> > never has KS3, Y7/9 in their vocabulary. It's the 3 years you learn stuff
> > without the pressure of exams in secondary school, ages 11-14)
> >
> > It isn't designed to replace anything else on the market. It is designed
> > however to help and ENTICE people get the first rung on the ladder
> whereby
> > they they think the ladder might be worth climing.
> >
> > It's aim is to INSPIRE.
> >
> > Who is it intended to inspire?
> >
> > Geeks? No. They'll get interested anyway. None of us on this list is now
> or
> > ever has been the target audience.
> >
> > Kids with inspired, inspiring, engaged teachers? No. They're awesome,
> this
> > is intended to help them inspire their kids, but they're not the
> audience.
> > They'd find *something* however, without this. (this also means any
> teacher
> > who attended Pycon UK is also NOT the audience, since they're already
> > engaged.)
> >
> > The audience is the child who has yet to be turned off computing (but
> will
> > be or perhaps has been) because they've had 6/7 years of homework in
> primary
> > school and for the past 4 of them they've probably been using computers
> to
> > write up and draw up their homework, and to open their eyes to the idea
> that
> > they can create something cool.
> >
> > The idea is to simply make it as simple, as possible, as accessible as
> > possible for the child who who when exposed to this stuff becomes
> > interested. (After all, by the time they reach A-Level, that's 36,000
> > children who were turned off by the curriculum)
> >
> > It's the child who is not just pre-GCSE, but 2 years pre-GCSE. 2 years
> > pre-GCSE in a school where a teacher teaches the bare minimum of the
> > simplest curriculum, which they chose because they don't know very much
> at
> > all.
> >
> > It's the child who's teacher thinks "I won't teach that that yet, because
> > there'll be nothing for next year".
> >
> > It's the child who's teacher was until last year a Business Studies
> teacher
> > and thinks that the move to teach coding is a stupid and annoying one,
> and
> > that there's no point teaching year 7 or 8 anything now because by the
> time
> > they reach year 9, the curriculum will change back again after a failed
> > experiment.
> >
> > It's for the child who can't get access to a library because they live in
> > the highlands of scotland, or orkneys, or Falklands.
> >
> > It's for the child who thinks "I can't spell, I can't do anything" - but
> > they CAN do this, and suddenly they have a world of opportunity before
> them,
> > and it turns out 4 years later they're undiagnosed dyslexic.
> >
> > It's for the child who's teacher only goes over any idea once, and
> generally
> > only covers what's on the BBC Bytesize website, because they know the BBC
> > puts a lot of effort into making that cover the curriculum (whether it
> > achieves that is another matter), and they believe rightly or wrongly
> that's
> > enough, and the child is ill that one day and it's never repeated.
> >
> > (I can think of specific representative teachers for each of these)
> >
> > In short, the target audience is for a child, just out of primary school,
> > who's parents don't care, who's teaching support doesn't care, and
> doesn't
> > think they can do things, and to inspire THEM that they can.
> >
> > It's for children who have never touched code, and are only doing so
> because
> > their teacher is telling them to, and think they're the wrong sort of
> person
> > (a common view amongst girls), and given half a chance they'd be doing
> > something else.
> >
> > It's a device aimed at supporting EVERY child, including the "weakest"
> > child, they child who believes they *can't* either because they really
> can't
> > (there is a bell curve for everything), or simply because they've never
> been
> > told they can (and needs to hear it). It's a device aimed not at you, or
> me,
> > or our younger selves, but at everyone. It's aimed at the person you see
> in
> > the shop who now is a checkout person, and was once 11. It's aimed the
> > street cleaner you see, but when they were 11. It's aimed at the office
> > worker who is bored with their work, and solves problems every day, but
> was
> > once 11.
> >
> > This was the reason that the prototype had a flat API, since you only
> look
> > in one place. It was based on watching real users and seeing the problems
> > they have (the events prototype that came earlier). It's based on
> experience
> > of working with children of all abilities - the ones with dyslexia,
> > dyspraxia, ADD, or just plain average, or below average intelligence.
> >
> > Every other possible audience involved benefits from those decisions.
> >
> > Now, I'm not going to bikeshed the API - until I get to review what's
> been
> > proposed - since that's really unfair and disrespectful to those who
> > graciously gave up their time on monday, for which I'm very thankful.
> >
> > Given the choice, in this project I choose inspiration, not correctness,
> > every time. You could say people often say "Make it work, make it work
> > right, make it fast", but before that there has to be the decision "to
> > make".
> >
> > On that basis, I didn't even require this line:
> >
> >     from microbit import *
> >
> > Or this:
> >
> >     import microbit
> >
> > The functions were just considerded builtins to the device. I can see why
> > every other python programmer balks at this, but this is precisely the
> > approach that pygame zero takes (I'd not seen that before pycon uk, so my
> > impression could be wrong there).
> >
> > That said, to put this into perspective, if we inspire just 3% of
> children
> > to change their minds and start climbing the ladder, then we haven't just
> > done good, but we will actually have reversed 15-17 years of decline in
> this
> > field, and that will hit in 2020. (rather than 2028 - which is when the
> > first set of primary kids starting the new curriculum will leave school)
> >
> > Hmm. That was longer than I expected. Sorry about that.
> >
> >
> > But I do know the answer to this question - the goal of the micro:bit is
> > very simply INSPIRATION, and that should be the trade off here. (But yes,
> > correctness matters)
> >
> > As I said though, this isn't posted to critique or support any particular
> > API. It's just intended to explain the thinking behind the device, and
> the
> > impact on my thinking when building the prototype and designing its API.
> I
> > also think that the decision won't be mine and shouldn't be mine either,
> and
> > I'll support whatever decision IS made, proudly and loudly.
> >
> > While getting resources and materials done ASAP does matter, sacrificing
> > that for spending a day or two discussing whether an API is the right
> one -
> > especially with regard to the tensions between ease of use and
> "correctness"
> > is good.
> >
> > Pythonic-ness good. Micro-bitty-ness, better :-)
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Michael.
> >
> > (and once again, sorry about the length of this, but I feel pretty
> > passionately about this :-)
> >
> >
> > On 23 September 2015 at 00:25, Alan <alainjackson at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Sometimes when agreement doesn't come easily it can be because the goal
> >> isn't clear to everyone.... which made think that perhaps the goal isn't
> >> clear to me.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> If it's the first, then there's a strong case to make our designs
> >> "proper", even at the expense of making things a bit more difficult for
> the
> >> novice initially.
> >>
> >> If it's the second then the emphasis changes and it's more weighted
> >> towards accessibility, I think.
> >>
> >> I realise I've been assuming the goal is the second and I'm happy to be
> >> corrected if it's not.
> >>
> >>
> >> In my mind the micro:bit is it's own fun little problem solving
> universe.
> >> It doesn't have a web browser or built in games (yay!) - it's only
> going to
> >> do what you make it do. It's amazing that you can program it in python.
> Even
> >> if it happened to use some non-standard variant of python or its API
> wasn't
> >> completely "proper" it wouldn't really bother me... iff we're aiming
> for the
> >> second goal. If we're aiming for the first, it would bother me.
> >>
> >>
> >> When I suggested a flat version of the API I wasn't just thinking about
> 11
> >> year-olds and their typing or spelling ski11z, I was thinking about
> teachers
> >> and myself. I'm wondering if, in the classroom (which is only one
> situation
> >> of its use), it's going to feel more like "live coding". It really did
> for
> >> me when we were all round the table at pycon and Nick was saying
> "You've got
> >> 20 minutes to make something interesting", and I was coding on the REPL,
> >> continuously recreating my program with the up arrow and finding out the
> >> command history is only 10 lines.
> >>
> >> If these thoughts aren't useful or are bike-shedding, please ignore
> them.
> >> I don't want to waste your valuable time and distract you from the cool
> >> stuff you're doing.
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >>
> >> Alan
> >>
> >> ________________________________
> >> Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2015 23:13:17 +0100
> >> From: david at thinkingbinaries.com
> >> To: microbit at python.org
> >> Subject: Re: [Microbit-Python] Flat API
> >>
> >> I'm sure both GCSE and AQA specifications talk about abstraction and
> >> decomposition - how can you do that without functions??
> >>
> >> All our 11 year olds use functions in the schools I work with. We
> >> introduce functions in Adventures in Minecraft (aimed at 11-15 year
> olds and
> >> mostly syncronised to the GCSE curriculum) in chapter 3 and use them
> >> extensively through to chapter 10 as a way to build up and test
> programs in
> >> small incremental steps.
> >>
> >> I personally think OCR are wrong on this.
> >>
> >> D
> >>
> >> ___________________________________________________________
> >> David Whale, B.Sc (Hons), MIET
> >> Software Engineer and IET Schools Liaison Officer, Essex
> >>
> >> email:  dwhale at theiet.org
> >> twitter: @whaleygeek
> >> blog:  blog.whaleygeek.co.uk
> >>
> >> Co-author of the new book "Adventures in Minecraft" - lets get kids
> >> coding!
> >>
> >>
> >> On 22 September 2015 at 16:09, Michael <sparks.m at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Cool. I was more worried I'd offended you. Glad I haven't :-)
> >>
> >> (it's very difficult to tell over email, so try to err on the side of
> >> caution!)
> >>
> >> To explain where I'm coming from perhaps better,  I've been hanging out
> on
> >> the computing at school forum now for 2-3 years (or more), and randomly
> >> reply to python queries on there, and been rather surprised to see this
> >> response sort of response from time to time - either to my replies or to
> >> other people's:
> >>
> >>  ...  thanks for taking the time to write it. Although the fact that you
> >> recommend using functions also reminded me that we are not in the right
> >> territory: Functions are outside the scope of OCR GCSE programming,
> believe
> >> it or not (they are present in the AQA specifications though, so maybe I
> >> should switch…)
> >>
> >>
> >> (this was in a response to a simple question about validating input
> data,
> >> and simply suggested simple "isint" and "isfloat" functions to avoid
> >> repeating the same logic over and over...)
> >>
> >> That's a little scary to me, and it's always at the back of my mind -
> >> because it's a far more common perspective. That comment incidentally is
> >> from a teacher who is teaching 14-16 year olds rather than 11-12 year
> olds.
> >> (and yes, there were plenty of other replies from other teachers saying
> that
> >> was the wrong approach)
> >>
> >> It's interesting actually, if this was an API for CodeClubs (even for
> the
> >> same age range), I wouldn't even have worried at all.
> >>
> >> Anyway, I'll wait to see the bike now before I start suggesting training
> >> wheels or a different colour shed :-)
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >>
> >>
> >> Michael.
> >>
> >> On 22 September 2015 at 15:49, Larry Hastings <larry at hastings.org>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On 09/22/2015 02:05 PM, Michael wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >>
> >> Sorry if I've offended you (it looks like I might've done).
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Naah, no worries.  And I didn't realize you weren't there yesterday--I
> >> didn't get everybody's names.
> >>
> >> This is private, but I can post this to the list if you like,
> >>
> >>
> >> /arry
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> Microbit at python.org
> >> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/microbit
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/microbit
> >>
> >>
> >>
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> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Microbit mailing list
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> >> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/microbit
> >>
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/microbit
> >
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