On 22 Sep 2006 at 8:22, David Brin wrote: > Only a small minority seemed at all interested in even > looking at my core idea, which was how to create a > nice, comfortable starting point for millions of kids, > so they could use their computers to do a little > COMPUTING for mild classroom assignments, and so get a > taste of this way of looking at the world.
If the examples are writtern in modern BASIC, then why not? That'll with with a range of modern BASICs up to and including FreeBASIC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBASIC If it's not writtern in modern BASIC, then I have no sympathy. People don't number lines anymore. People don't use goto's. Teaching a chuld the wrong fundermental basics of coding is not a good idea. Actually, personally I'd recommend Pascal, especially for dyslexic children - the syntax is considered far more natural by many. http://www.freepascal.org/ > 3) Many readers are so enthusiastic for PYTHON... and Personally I detest it. I'm a scriptor, not a coder. I have some Pascal skills, but i've mostly worked with Lua and varients, as well as visual scripting languages (partial and full), the powerful and propriatory SRealmsScript and so on. I don't like the useage of indenting it uses, it misses a lot of libraries I've used with php and it doesn't do automatic garbage collection (I admit that one usually bites me, Lua and SRealmsScript spoilt me in that regard). > Indeed, Python is so widely available, that the goal > might be achieved simply via some kind of > DECLARATION... say by a prominent education > association... declaring support for a Python-based > universal entry-level environment. If Can't be just python. It doesn't compile natively, and has no native GUI. Something to keep in mind, anyway. If Lua ever gives up on being a scripting language and becomes a fully fledged programing language, then frankly it has just the potential you want to see. It's very powerful, free-as-in-free (it's used in a number of high profile commercial games for scripting) and the syntax is easy to learn for coders and non-coders alike print "Hello, world" http://www.lua.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lua_programming_language AndrewC Dawn Falcon _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
