Suggestions -- Language & IDE for Junior High Club?
Locked
Suggestions -- Language & IDE for Junior High Club?
 
|
Hi Group,
We do a little junior high math club each year
(about ages 12-14).
Always had it in my mind to introduce them to a
little programming to "see" the mathematics. Goal will
be just to do a few small modest modeling efforts; ie maybe physics 1D motion,
friction, etc.
Problem is time; lots of homework, etc; so
club is only one hour/week, so dev environment would have to be very
simple to install and use.
Considering:
vw -- browser/tools learning
curve might be a bit much though? Could skip MVC and go to simpler
MV.
javascript -- pro is it's ready to go, have to refresh about intuitiveness of objects clamato (Smalltalk on javascript -- have not yet
tried it?)
squeak -- have not yet tried? java -- syntax I think too tough given time ruby -- Possibly, but UI (ie rails) too
db-centric
spreadsheet -- leaning this way as 'starting
point'
Others?
Ideally it would be simplified (classic)
Smalltalk; simple browsers, graph pane use, etc.
I expect the group will all be beginners. Key I
think is the 'getting started'. If we get up the learning curve, then the kids
will find ways to 'make time'. I think I'm hoping to be coninced elsewhere
(relative to spreadsheet).
Any ideas/thoughts would be much
appreciated!
Gary
_______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc |
Re: Suggestions -- Language & IDE for Junior High Club?
|
|
Gary, _______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc |
Re: Suggestions -- Language & IDE for Junior High Club?
|
|
In reply to this post by Gary Peterson
Hi Gary,
The Open University course Jason was referring to was 'M206 Computing An Object Orientated Approach', I know because I took the course myself in 2000 and it was very good. The only book I know of regarding this course on Amazon is Eric Tatham's 'Smalltalk bytes book' http://www.amazon.co.uk/Smalltalk-Bytes-Book-Tatham/dp/0954451406/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1290856929&sr=1-1 which is a tutorial reference and something I still find useful to refer to. It is basically written in a glossary format so anything you need is easy to find. Best wishes Barry Freshwater -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [vwnc] Suggestions -- Language & IDE for Junior High Club? Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2010 09:34:12 -0000 From: Ayers, Jason <[hidden email]> To: <[hidden email]>, <[hidden email]> Gary, I would suggest WebVelocity. We use it in workshops with people that have no Smalltalk experience and they write a sudoku solver in an hour. For me it is the most simple to use yet modern Smalltalk environment out there today. The most accessible might but a good way to put it. Also you just need firefox or chrome on the client machine to access it. Clean browser interface. I should say that I have no experience of Etoys which might do the job for you. Also regardless of the environment you choose take a look at the book written about the UK's Open University course that introduced programming to newbie's using Smalltalk. The course was highly rated at the time. I am sorry I can't remember it's title but Amazon sells it. Jason ----- Original Message ----- From: [hidden email] <[hidden email]> To: [hidden email] <[hidden email]> Sent: Sat Nov 27 05:26:03 2010 Subject: [vwnc] Suggestions -- Language & IDE for Junior High Club? Hi Group, We do a little junior high math club each year (about ages 12-14). Always had it in my mind to introduce them to a little programming to "see" the mathematics. Goal will be just to do a few small modest modeling efforts; ie maybe physics 1D motion, friction, etc. Problem is time; lots of homework, etc; so club is only one hour/week, so dev environment would have to be very simple to install and use. Considering: vw -- browser/tools learning curve might be a bit much though? Could skip MVC and go to simpler MV. javascript -- pro is it's ready to go, have to refresh about intuitiveness of objects clamato (Smalltalk on javascript -- have not yet tried it?) squeak -- have not yet tried? java -- syntax I think too tough given time ruby -- Possibly, but UI (ie rails) too db-centric spreadsheet -- leaning this way as 'starting point' Others? Ideally it would be simplified (classic) Smalltalk; simple browsers, graph pane use, etc. I expect the group will all be beginners. Key I think is the 'getting started'. If we get up the learning curve, then the kids will find ways to 'make time'. I think I'm hoping to be coninced elsewhere (relative to spreadsheet). Any ideas/thoughts would be much appreciated! Gary --- avast! Antivirus: Outbound message clean. Virus Database (VPS): 101126-2, 26/11/2010 Tested on: 27/11/2010 11:28:49 avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2010 AVAST Software. http://www.avast.com _______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc |
|
|
In reply to this post by Gary Peterson
One finished Smalltalk app you might look at for this is Dave Buck's ElastoLab -
On Nov 27, 2010, at 12:26 AM, Gary Peterson wrote:
James Robertson _______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc |
Re: Suggestions -- Language & IDE for Junior High Club?
|
|
In reply to this post by Jason Ayers

Thank you very much Jason!
I now have several new ideas -- WebVelocity, BotsInc, Etoys.
Dumb question -- I assume firefox or chrome can be used "alongside"
IE? I don't want to immediately prevent (blow away) their IE
usage; if that is their tool; they can decide later on that one. Do you
know if that is the case? I'll send question to browsers forum as well.
Seems to be okay (compatible on same computer) based on forums and
such, but there is some mention of problems with IE liking to "hang around
in memory" blocking ie firefox.
Thank you,
Gary P
_______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc |
Re: Suggestions -- Language & IDE for Junior High Club?
|
|
In reply to this post by jarober
Thank you James for another one; download in
progress...
_______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc |
|
|
In reply to this post by jarober
For Vista, I suspect that you can get around that by installing as Admin, or installing somewhere other than "Program Files"
On Nov 27, 2010, at 10:43 AM, Gary Peterson wrote:
James Robertson _______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc |
Re: Suggestions -- Language & IDE for Junior High Club?
|
|
Thank you James,
Actually Dave has already sent me a note, and is
doing a quick package update, so I'll try that first.
Thank you,
Gary P
_______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc |
|
|
In reply to this post by Gary Peterson
WebVelocity development requires Firefox, Chrome, or Safari - you can deploy to IE, but, iirc, you can't develop in it - some of the requisite support isn't there.
As to what might happen in the future, you would have to ask someone at Cincom - I have no idea what the future plans for WebVelocity are :) On Nov 27, 2010, at 10:19 AM, Gary Peterson wrote:
James Robertson _______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc |
Re: Suggestions -- Language & IDE for Junior High Club?
|
|
In reply to this post by Gary Peterson
--- On Fri, 11/26/10, Gary Peterson <[hidden email]> wrote:
> We do a little junior high math club each year > (about ages 12-14). > Always had it in my mind to introduce them to a > little programming to "see" the mathematics. "Learning Programming with Erlang or Learning Erlang with Ladybirds" pdf http://dahuang.dhxy.info/p93-huch.pdf [slides] http://www.erlang.se/workshop/2007/proceedings/12huch.pdf _______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc |
Re: Suggestions -- Language & IDE for Junior High Club?
|
|
In reply to this post by Gary Peterson
— a curriculum for middle-school students.
http://www.bootstrapworld.org/ - DrRacket (formerly known as DrScheme) http://racket-lang.org/ _______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc |
Re: Suggestions -- Language & IDE for Junior High Club?
|
|
In reply to this post by Gary Peterson
On Nov 26, 2010, at 9:26 PM, Gary Peterson wrote:
This one is interesting to me, because we're actively working towards making the idea of MV a reality in VW. We'll never get rid of the ability to do MVC, for both technical reasons, and there are cases where it can be the right tool for the job. But it's not the right tool for ALL jobs. Especially making it easy for people to make interactive widgets. All of the "new" widgets used by the IDE itself for the last couple of releases eschew controllers completely (Skinny protoype, the prerequisite tool, the bundle load order tool, the comparison tools). Couple builds ago, we put in some infrastructure that makes these even easier to do. I've been meaning to write up about it, I'll try to do soon as a sort of tutorial. One of the things that makes VW (and Squeak has this stuff built in) really cool for "engineering/math" stuff is the NumericCollections stuff. I developed it as a Mechanical Engineering student, and frequently ran circles around peers when doing lab studies. The ability to read some data in, and then quickly do array manipulations was really quick and powerful. Measurements was another thing I used to great fun as an Engineering student. -- Travis Griggs Objologist I multiply all time estimates by pi, to account for running around in circles. _______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc |
Re: Suggestions -- Language & IDE for Junior High Club?
|
|
Thank you Travis.
Will look forward to new paper!
Whichever of the two approaches you take for
your infrastructures, I think if you build it up so we can put 85% of our time
and effort into the "M" side, that will be cool (for these mathy types of things
anyway).
Gary
_______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc |
Re: Suggestions -- Language & IDE for Junior High Club?
|
|
In reply to this post by Travis Griggs-4
I second the value and utility of the NumericCollections package.
I think it is invaluable for engineering/math/statistics or even simple and obvious things such as summing a collection of numbers with one simple message (sum). Arden On Nov 27, 2010, at 11:06 PM, Travis Griggs wrote:
Arden Thomas Cincom Smalltalk Product Manager 845 296 0686 Cincom Smalltalk - It makes hard things easier, the impossible, possible "Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication" - Leonardo Da Vinci _______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc |
|
|
Hi Arden,
Do you have any samples similar to your "Walk
Through", but for the web site of things, vw, seaside, ...?
Thank you,
Gary P
_______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc |
|
|
Hi Gary;
Our product tutorials are here: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/main/developer-community/tutorials/ Scroll down to Web Development for the Seaside and Webkit related tutorials. Mostly screencasts here IIRC. Also see http://book.seaside.st/book hth Regards Arden On Dec 22, 2010, at 11:26 PM, Gary Peterson wrote:
Arden Thomas Cincom Smalltalk Product Manager 845 296 0686 Cincom Smalltalk - It makes hard things easier, the impossible, possible "Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication" - Leonardo Da Vinci _______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc |
|
|
So long as they don't take it down, you can get to a somewhat better organized index here:
A couple things you might want to note: -- There's a non-screencast version of the Seaside tutorial. Everything else is a screencast. -- Unless someone else at Cincom starts doing new ones, the screencast series ended in October when I left. As Cincom pushes out new releases, some of the screencasts in that archive will start to be out of date. As time goes by, more and more of them will be in that state On Dec 23, 2010, at 7:53 AM, Arden Thomas wrote:
James Robertson _______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc |
|
|
In reply to this post by Gary Peterson
Also, Cincom's WebVelocity includes three walk-throughs for Seaside, including one that shows how to persist data with Glorp. With WebVelocity running, simply click on Documentation > Introduction > Walk-Throughs. Best regards, M. Roberts Cincom Systems, Inc. On 12/23/2010 1:26 PM, Gary Peterson wrote:
_______________________________________________ vwnc mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc |
«
Return to VisualWorks
|
1 view|%1 views
| Free forum by Nabble | Edit this page |