Ken Kahn (kenkahn@toontalk.com)
Thu, 9 Sep 1999 14:25:03 -0700
From: "Ken Kahn" <kenkahn@toontalk.com> Subject: Re: The Role of Computer Programming in Educatoin Date: Thu, 9 Sep 1999 14:25:03 -0700
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> From: Martin Owen <t.m.owen@bangor.ac.uk>
> Subject: Re: The Role of Computer Programming in Education
>
> >
> The amazing thing is is that thinking enhances thinking. hat programming
> does it any better than doing any hard activity has yet to be proven. For
> me making computers do interesting things is one of the best games in
town.
> However I realise that for other people it is other activities.
>
I agree. And I think some of the Clark Quinn's questions about what is so
special about programming fit here. As does the thread about whether Harel
should really have lumped in media creation with programming. In the
foreword to Mindstorms, Seymour Papert writes about the "gears of his
childhood". For Seymour as a child, gears were the subject of his hard
thinking. As Martin Owen wrote "thinking enhances thinking" and hard
thinking enhances it even better.
So am I agreeing that computer programming isn't so special, but is just one
instance of hard thinking (or "hard fun" as Papert calls it)? At the end of
the foreword to Mindstorms Seymour writes:
"My thesis could be summarized as: What the gears cannot do the computer
might. The computer is the Proteus of machines. Its essence is its
universality, its power to simulate. Because it can take on a thousand forms
and can serve a thousand functions, it can appeal to a thousand tastes. This
book is the result of my own attempts over the past decade to turn computers
into instruments flexible enough so that many children can each create for
themselves something like what the gears were for me."
I think the point here is the same one I tried to make with the quotes from
Hillis about the "imagination machine" and Kay about "metamedia". No one is
claiming that programming will appeal to all tastes - but what else can
claim to appeal to "a thousand tastes"?
> Surely the main point of Mindstorms was not just "learning programming"-
> but kids doing AI.
I would say that the main point was kids thinking about thinking. Kids
thinking about programming artificial intelligence is a great example of
that but so is kids programming squares and triangles with turtle geometry.
What do others think? Kids doing AI - is that special or just another
example of good things kids might program?
>
> Alan Perlis, onetime Head of Computing at MIT is quoted in the forward to
> "The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programmes" (Abelson &
> DiSessa MIT Press):
>
> "Art can only interpret our dreams, computer programs can execute them!".
>
Another great quote! Thanks. It got me thinking that maybe the "Proteus of
machines" or "imagination machine" or "metamedia" is really about two
different things that make programming so special. One is that it can appeal
to so many tastes. The other is that it is an aid for thinking/imagining.
Unlike Babbage and Ada Lovelace, we not only create programs but execute
them. And by executing them we learn how rules or laws interact. We see how
simple rules applied literally millions of times a second can produce
qualatatively different results than we are able to imagine.
Best,
-ken
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