Arun-Kumar Tripathi (tripathi@statistik.uni-dortmund.de)
Thu, 9 Sep 1999 06:00:27 +0200 (MET DST)
Date: Thu, 9 Sep 1999 06:00:27 +0200 (MET DST) From: Arun-Kumar Tripathi <tripathi@statistik.uni-dortmund.de> Subject: Re: 'The Role of Computer Programming in Education from Young Children to Doctoral Students' (fwd)
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Greetings Dr. Kahn & Forum - Some Interesting responses to your
interesting questions from Professor John McLaughlin. Thanks!
PS: Please DO NOT give responses to him, because he is extremely busy.
Sincerely
Arun Tripathi
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 8 Sep 1999 22:54:09 -0400 (EDT)
From: John McLaughlin <johnmc@esu.edu>
To: Arun-Kumar Tripathi <tripathi@statistik.uni-dortmund.de>
Subject: Re: 'The Role of Computer Programming in Education from Young Children
to Doctoral Students'
You're asking someone with minimal experience in programming, OK? But
I've been around a few years, so I can give you this kind of response:
On Thu, 9 Sep 1999, Arun-Kumar Tripathi wrote:
> Questions for discussion include:
>
> 1. Was the original vision behind Logo (best articulated by Seymour Papert) flawed?
> Or was the vision fine but the technology inadequate? Or were the problems more
> societal and political?
Most probably a combination of all of them. Logo may have been oversold
early on, or at least over-adopted by people who didn't see the
complexities of child language, for example. So when they ran into
problems, they got stymied very fast. That's how I saw it, from the
sidelines of programming but involved in linguistics and language
acquisition issues pprofessionally, at the time.
> 2. Why did interest in programming in school drop in the last 10 to 15 years?
Because people tumbled to the rapid obsolescence problems and saw all
they had to do was wait a awhile and it'd get simpler & simpler to be an
end-user of the coding done by drone programmers? I dunno, beyond a
guess. I do know people who stayed in programming have had to learn &
re-learn languages all the time, so it's almost impossible to keep up. See
Ellen Ullman, Technophilia * Its Discontents,* for a discussion of
ignorant "experts."
> 3. All of the new programming systems include many components to aid learning to
> master the programming language ranging from interactive tutorials to animated
> demos to quasi-intelligent guide or coach characters. Is this what was lacking before?
Wouldn't surprise me. But still interest in learning to program has
dropped precipitously - see above. It *is* boring. You don't have to learn
HTML now, for example, if all you weant to do is put up a simple web-page.
That's an example of how programming problems have been circumvented by
changes in technological access.
> 4. All of the new languages are visual programming languages where text plays only
> a minor role. Will this make a significant difference?
I dunno. If people can't be bothered, they can't be bothered; if multiple
new users can access and negotiate computers with minimal programming
expertise, there's been a whole new class of computer users created
anyway. I do know that dyslexic people love apple computers, if that's
shat you're aasking; there are a lot of semi-literates who hate to work
thro text if they can avoid it, and apple serves thast clientele. Of
course, you're talking to someone whose first exposuire to computers was
in the pre-Apple, IBM days, so what can I saay.
> 5. Some of the new languages (those from LEGO and K NEX) are specialized for
> robotics programming. Is this a good thing? Does this limit their scope?
All programming is limited in scope -- specialized in function is another
way of putting it. People who're interested in programming robots will
learn to program robots. People interested in using -- or getting other
people to use -- robots will also do so. There are enormous industrial
and social implications, not least the widespread unemployment of
semi-skilled workers on assembly lines, which follow from the widespread
adoption of robots doing assembly line work. Entry level jobs in
industry have all but disappeared these days, as a result.This goes beyond
programming questions and into the economics of the situation. Many
programmers are inadequately prepared to think thro social implications
of their coding work. See Ellen Ullman's book for a discussion of this,
also.
> 6. Is computer programming just too difficult? For students? For
teachers?
Those aren't questions I'm prepared to answer. I don't think programming
so very difficult. It's just boring as hell, nitpicky to the extreme. I
don't do much work with people learning to program these days.
I'm going to be very busy in the next few weeks, with teaching extra
classes. I don't think I'll be available much to get into these
brainstorming sessions. OK? I hope the above has helped somewhat.
John
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