goer@ellis.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz) (04/20/91)
We run a Xenix box here at home, but have a PC as well, and a DOS emulator. I have a son who has started writing programs in GW- BASIC, and after 500 lines or so has trouble keeping track of his program. Does anyone have a recommendation for a better beginning programming language? NB: The child in question is 5, so I'd prefer not to teach him C, and probably not Pascal either. The only requirement I'd have is that the language be very high level, and have a good command of the screen (dumb UNIX tty I/O bores him; I don't want to sick him on X yet). Logo has been recommended to me. I know nothing about pricing and availability. PC lisp dialects have also been mentioned to me. I think these would be good. Lisp syntax is trivial, and my son could master it in a few days. The trouble with LISP is that I don't know of PC dialects with good I/O. Any information anyone (any fathers out there?) could give me would be much appreciated by me. Personal letters that bear fruit will be rewarded by a thank-you from my son :-). -- -Richard L. Goerwitz goer%sophist@uchicago.bitnet goer@sophist.uchicago.edu rutgers!oddjob!gide!sophist!goer
goer@ellis.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz) (04/21/91)
I recently posted a query about the "best" introductory PC language -
an inquiry for my 5 year-old. Many have mistaken my request, so let
me try to be clearer:
1) The child in question already knows GW-BASIC, and writes
programs with as many as 500 lines, and understands Car-
tesian coordinates, binary data representation, flow-of-
control, random numbers, etc. He likes to program on Sat.
mornings while daddy and mommy are still "sleeping" ;-),
and has no trouble looking up basic commands in the manual.
2) The child in question has gotten himself into pretty deep
water, writing spaghetti code that I have a hard time un-
ravelling when he gets into trouble (which happens a lot).
3) Given that he knows GW-BASIC, and it's not filling his needs,
I'm trying to find something that will be better for him.
What I'm trying to find for him is a language that
a) runs on a PC (can't beat the price)
b) has full, fast, high-level graphics capabilities
c) is NOT a labeled language like GW-BASIC
d) is interpreted (in the interactive sense)
e) has a fairly simple syntax
One other thing that my son would probably like is built-in
handling of bignums and nice floating point routines. He
has a penchant for pushing things to the limit.
I'm sorry if I wasn't clear enough before. I got a bunch or responses
saying that I shouldn't expect too much of him, or that BASIC was a
good introductory language. Believe me, I don't push him at all. He
does most of this on his own. And he already knows BASIC quite well,
and it's clearly not doing the job (at least the GW-BASIC variety).
I'm almost exclusively a UNIX programmer, and I've tried teaching him
Icon (a high-level string processing language). He doesn't like doing
dumb UNIX tty stuff, though. Can someone who knows PC software please
help me???
--
-Richard L. Goerwitz goer%sophist@uchicago.bitnet
goer@sophist.uchicago.edu rutgers!oddjob!gide!sophist!goerjcburt@ipsun.larc.nasa.gov (John Burton) (04/23/91)
In article <1991Apr21.005055.10020@midway.uchicago.edu> goer@ellis.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz) writes: >I recently posted a query about the "best" introductory PC language - >an inquiry for my 5 year-old. Many have mistaken my request, so let >me try to be clearer: > [...much stuff deleted...] >-- > > -Richard L. Goerwitz goer%sophist@uchicago.bitnet > goer@sophist.uchicago.edu rutgers!oddjob!gide!sophist!goer Richard, I tried replying directly to you, but apparently my mailer is sick... I know you mentioned earlier that you weren't really interested in C or PASCAL for your son...for what its worth... Get a copy of TURBO PASCAL by Borland International. Its a GREAT language for learning/teaching computer programming (most colleges that I know of base their comp. sci. curriculm on PASCAL...They use it to teach structured programming *before* going off into other areas such as Object Oriented Programming (Smalltalk), string processing (SNOBOL, etc) and AI (PROLOG, Lisp). If your son is writting programs that contain ~500 lines of code, then he should be able to handle TURBO PASCAL...It has its IDE (Integrated Development Environment) and many graphics routines/functions...Its also recommended as a good "starting language" for people just learning to program... Good Luck John +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | John Burton | | G & A Technical Software | | jcburt@gatsibm.larc.nasa.gov | | jcburt@cs.wm.edu | | | | Disclaimer: Hey, what can I say...These are *my* views, not those | | of anyone else, be they employer, school, or government| +--------------------------------------------------------------------+