Re: [Edu-sig] editor for children (was Re: explaining functions [Possibly OT])

[Reuben Grinberg]

Vi/ vim and emacs are great editors for programmers that have the time 
to learn all their functionality. However, the learning curve for both 
of these editors is steep. They are extremely different from anything 
most students are familiar with (namely Microsoft Word, Notepad, Text 
Areas in web apps, etc...) It's especially disturbing when you open one 
of these for the first time and can't seem to quit! I mean, ESC-:q and 
C-x C-c – pretty intuitive, huh?

Nedit is a pretty good editor (http://www.nedit.org/) in several 
respects. It has syntax hilighting for many programming languages, uses 
the mouse and arrow keys, has menus, and uses familiar keyboard 
shortcuts such as Control-C (copy) Control-V (paste), Control-X (cut), 
^S (save), ^O (open), ^W (close), ^Q (quit), ^P (print), etc... There's 
basically no learning curve at all, but there are lots of advanced 
features that are easy to get to.

The downside is that it's not straight-forward to install on non-linux 
machines (on most linux machines, just type nedit into a terminal and 
it should launch. On Windows, it can be installed using Cygwin. Nedit 
has a native binary for OS X and it can also be installed using Fink.

My 2 cents,
Reuben Grinberg
P.S. I'm a 4th year CS major at Yale. For the record, I use emacs, 
pico, nedit, and xcode to do most of my coding. Every once in a while 
I'll use Eclipse for a project, but I find it really annoying to set 
up.


On Dec 7, 2004, at 4:39 AM, Laura Creighton wrote:
In a message of Tue, 07 Dec 2004 06:02:47 +0430, "Lee Harr" writes:
Does anybody have any recommendations for an editor for children?  
In th
e
days I was speaking, I used an editor called 'brief' but I don't 
think t
hey
are in business any more.
What attributes are needed in a "for children" editor?
(or is a list of attributes what you are looking for?)
Not really.  I taught the after school club emacs, which meant we 
spent a lot
of time 'learnng how to use the editor'.  They were bright, heavily 
motivated,
and what was best, _only 5 of them_. And they got there by being very 
curious
what I was doing to present stuff to them.  But the next proposed 
summer lot
will be a group of 30, and I don't think I will have enough individual
instruction time.  So I wonder if there is an editor they are likely to
know -- perhaps unsurprisingly, most kids I know use Microsoft Word to
edit things, and that's a _rotten_ editor for programming -- of if 
there
is one that is known for the speed at which it is learnt.

Laura
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