Hello, Thanks for your detailed response.
My focus is initiating them in PicoLisp. Also these are young, bright children who are in homeschool, are of 9, 11 ages and will just begin baby steps in Computer Science. All I want is KID LEVEL CODE SNIPPETS. Discussion over IRC is a good idea. What time will be best? Best Nehal On Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 16:16 Joh-Tob Schäg <johtob...@gmail.com wrote: > > Hello Nehal, > > here are several tangent thoughts. > > First: PicoLisp is great for mathematics, as long as you stay with > integers or fractions (frac.l). Working with 2.321 by *Scl is cumbersome > and there is no good way to hide the scaling for a new users yet. Even when > it is very irritating. I would claim "hiding" what PicoLisp does internally > is against the philosophy of PicoLisp. > The only other way would be to "build" your own floating points by > cons-ing the decimal place to the number. > > When i was young, i found turtle graphic a very intriguing toy. I used a > platform called netlogo. > The idea is that you have a turtle on the plain which you move by relative > coordinate changes. > Such a thing is great for drawing diagrams too. > The problem is that i think it is impossible to do a nice implementation > of that, since sin, cos, sqrt, multiplication with 2.321 , all would need > to be implemented in which makes the implementation much less nice than a > implementation in a language which "just" works with float points. > > That said: > If you mostly do not need floating points or find a work around that works > for you and them PicoLisp is indeed an option. > If there is one area where PicoLisp is a really nice toy it is: > symbolic-ai/lisp-ai/good-old-fashioned-ai > The idea is that you describe your problem in symbolic term and let it be > solved by search, symbolic transformations and hard coded behavioral rules > and clever heuristics. > The computer could be made to play chess with them, stack simulated boxes > or chat really badly with them. Or something like that. > > If you want to go down this route SICP might be a excellent inspiration. > However it is aimed at university students in so far as it builds programs > to calculate a symbolic derivative. If they are not familiar with such > concepts and would like more visual stuff, a nice road to introduce > recursion is L-Systems (they are simple symbolic systems which can be drawn > out to look very plant like,). > > These are my initial thoughts if you could tell us your ideas i can give > more detailed feedback. > It might be interesting to arrange a time where people interested in that > could meet in the IRC and discuss some ideas for an hour. > > sincerely freemint > > > > > Ursprüngliche Nachricht > > > > Von: nehalsingha...@gmail.com > Gesendet: 13. April 2019 11:41 > An: picolisp@software-lab.de > Antworten: picolisp@software-lab.de > Betreff: PicoLisp for 9-11 years' kids > > > Dear PicoLisp programmers, > > > I'll be introducing PicoLisp to two young exceptionally bright > sibling children (Ojas, boy age 9 years and Oshin, girl age 11 years, who > are in homeschool) who have no experience of computer science and > programming. > > > PicoLisp being the most advanced computational framework and perfect model > language suits best for this purpose > > > Migrating from one language to another becomes a tough job later in life. > Such as children knowing Sanskrit/German as their first language will find > them easy than people who learn them later in lives after already speaking > English (or any other language for that matter). > > > I'm very excited to begin this as it is a radical approach and is > extremely challenging. > > > I am considering what and how I should start. And at what stage should > they be introduced to C and Assembly? > > > I want them to get idea of PicoLisp as the language for handling all their > day to day projects that they'll be needing to do in coming days, and later > in life. > > > I also plan to introduce PicoLisp in local communities and schools > depending on my experience with them. You may be aware that proponents of > other Lisps such as http://www.racket-lang.org are putting lot of effort > with beginner level, easy to programme colorful pictures, animations and > graphics to provide lively introduction to young students to introduce > their language as first language early in their lives, even as a tool to > learn elementary Math, Science and also to make beautiful presentations. > > > Children will find it extremely attractive if they can create something > out of PicoLisp, like diagrams, presentations, Math (using svg library to > make geometric shapes, plot graphs etc). > > > These are some of my ideas that I'll be trying to implement. Yet I'll also > be needing help of other PicoLisp programmers in this regard. > > > Active cooperation, reviews, feedback and suggestions are welcome. > > > Best, > Nehal
