Scott Rossi wrote;
> As a matter of fact, since the accusations are hurling, flames are flying,
and there's generally a lot of smoke and debris around, I'd like to take
this opportunity throw some fuel on a different fire. I'll try and put this
as non-ageist as I can:
Rev developers are too old.
Many of us have been around the "development block" many times, some of us a
lot more than others, and we wear this history like a badge of honor. This
honor is unquestionably well deserved, but it wasn't until a newer Rev
community member came up to me during RevConWest and asked the following
question that it hit me:
"This conference is great, but where are all the young people?"
Sarah Reicheit wrote:
Good point, Scott. I know we have a few tertiary educators on this
list, but I would love to see Rev push into secondary schools. My
middle son (13) is starting a programming course next year and they
will be using Visual Basic. He has asked his teacher if he can use
Revolution instead, since he is already familiar with it. She is
agreeable, but I don't know if the school will be prepared to pay for
Rev when they already own VisualBasic.
Cheers,
Sarah
Sarah et. al.,
Although I come from the tertiary branch of the educational system,
my first objective for RR would be in the primary and secondary
schools. And for this reason I support Rev's stated objective of
implementing Turtle Graphics for Revolution.
By implementing TG I mean creating another class of controls, turtle
controls, like buttons, only different. Their properties would
include position (standard Cartesian coordinates with a user defined
origin-not the same as screen coordinates), heading (standard
Cartesian polar angle-0 along the right-pointing x-axis0, pen state
(pen up or pen down) so that they may draw (leave a trail) as they
move.
They would have an augmented vocabulary, responding to such commands
as Forward, Back, Right, Left, setXY, setRA, incXY, and functions
such as xyCor(of the turtle), direction(of the turtle), distance(to
any to any point), heading(direction to any object) etc.
And the course content would be directed toward programming as a
general problem-solving tool, as opposed to a course in computer
programming, recognizing that programming is a generic tool, useful
in a wide variety of endeavors. Examples would include, beside text
manipulation, applications in the sciences, acknowledging that every
scientist should have some programming experience, and that this is
the audience most likely to be attracted toward, and in need of such
a course.
(Some examples of application of TG to mathematics and the sciences
can be found in:
go stack url http://home.infostations.net/jhurley/TurtleGraphics.rev
Jim
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