On Jul 31, 2007, at 11:15 PM, Linda McIver wrote:
I'm surprised that no-one has mentioned John Pane's PhD work yet.
John actually did research (gasp) on how kids naturally specify
problem solutions, and came up with a system that allowed them to do
all kinds of neat programming in what was, according to his research,
a fairly natural way. HANDS, I think it was called, or that might
have been a precursor - I haven't looked at this stuff in years.
I don't know if any follow up work has been done, but the system John
came up with was pretty cute. I don't have the references to hand,
but it was part of the Natural Programming Project - I dare say a
search of Brad Myers' pages would find it!
HANDS is the name of the system. The system allows the programmer
to create two-dimensional games and simulations using language
constructs
which are more "natural" than traditional programming languages and
systems.
HANDS has been recently updated to run with Java 5.0. and OS X 10.4.
A number of papers (including John Pane's thesis) and information
concerning
HANDS can be found by following links on the following page:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pane/research.html
Jeffrey Edgington
University of Denver
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