On Sun, 2011-05-22 at 16:26 -0400, bearophile wrote: [ . . . ] > Regarding languages to be used as first language for adults or > near-adults, I think there is no very good language for this purpose > (for children the situation is better, there are many Logo variants, > some graphical languages, etc). And even if you invent a language very > good for this purpose, probably no one uses it, there are no libs and > ecosystem for it, so it keeps being a mostly useless and buggy toy. I > don't see many ways out of this situation.
Uuuurrr... this is just wrong on so many levels. To avoid writing an 10,000 word essay, I'll just stick to: Python and Groovy have proven to be excellent languages for teaching first year undergraduates and adults. Using robots wandering round screens is as good a technique for adults as it is for children. This is not speculation this is annually provable fact witness various teachers in various universities actually doing it. Possibly the single most important factor is having an edit/execute environment that works in terms of compilation units, though usually files. Groovy has the Groovy console which is brilliant, Python has idle, which is about adequate. REPLs are just not good enough for this task despite the obsession with using them in the Lisp, Scala, Clojure, Prolog, Haskell, etc. communities. -- Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 voip: sip:russel.win...@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 xmpp: rus...@russel.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk skype: russel_winder
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