Tomasz Rola wrote:
On Sun, 15 Jul 2012, Miles Fidelman wrote:
Tomasz Rola wrote:
Oh, I mean, yes, everybody can learn to program, but how many have any
kind of their own ideas for their own programs? Of all Lego (ab)users, how
many build their own constructs while the rest is content with copying
stuff? Of all literate humans, how many have something interesting to say,
worthy of saving on a piece of paper?
I was pretty serious when I suggested HyperCard. The amount of stuff that
people, particularly educators, wrote in HyperCard was rather amazing. As a
dirt-simple user-oriented authoring/programming environment, spreadsheets are
probably the only place where you'll find more user-generated code.
OK, you have a strong argument :-). I forgot about HyperCard and
spreadsheets - never used the former and only few times the latter, seems
like I come from the school which says a program is to be written as a
text - whether it is written on a paper, into a file or carved in wood is
not so much important in this school of mine. And it shapes my way of
thinking a lot.
I keep coming back to the notion that transparent tools are really
important - there's something about impedance matching between what
we're trying to do and the tools we use. All too often, computer tools
seem to make things harder, not easier - word processors make it easier
to write, but drawing programs are not really an improvement over paper
and pencil until we get to things like animation, and do we really don't
want to have to write a c program to write an essay or draw a picture?
So I kind of wonder if part of the underlying issue is a mismatch
between "something interesting to say" and the tools we have available.
Cheers,
Miles
--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
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