Re: The Future of LiveCode in Education

[RM]

On 2.03.2016 02:54, Alejandro Tejada wrote:

Hi Richmond


RM wrote

[SNIP]
In 1993 I ended up in a married student "cave" at Southern Illinois
University with an LC 475 on the desk in front of me and a screaming 7
month year old next to me (my wife had a Fulbright scholarship);
Hypercard probably prevented me from battering the baby to death!

Wow! HyperCard save lives too. :D


Indeed it did!

And I am quite sure that LiveCode could be leveraged to save lives in 
the form of a front-end

for cardiac-monitoring machines and so on!

R.



Last line of your message, reads
like an O'Henry short story:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._Henry

How many language teachers knows that they could
use LiveCode to teach hypertext and creative writing?
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221267074_Hypertext_and_Creative_Writing

Alejandro




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Re: The Future of LiveCode in Education

[Alejandro Tejada]

Hi Richmond


RM wrote
> [SNIP]
> In 1993 I ended up in a married student "cave" at Southern Illinois 
> University with an LC 475 on the desk in front of me and a screaming 7 
> month year old next to me (my wife had a Fulbright scholarship);
> Hypercard probably prevented me from battering the baby to death!

Wow! HyperCard save lives too. :D

Last line of your message, reads
like an O'Henry short story:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._Henry

How many language teachers knows that they could 
use LiveCode to teach hypertext and creative writing?
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221267074_Hypertext_and_Creative_Writing

Alejandro




--
View this message in context: 
http://runtime-revolution.278305.n4.nabble.com/Re-The-Future-of-LiveCode-in-Education-tp4701642p4701810.html
Sent from the Revolution - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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Re: The Future of LiveCode in Education

[RM]

On 1.03.2016 07:01, Colin Holgate wrote:

I’m trying to figure out which bit of information you mistyped. 1983 would be 
fairly late for getting an Apple II, but 1983 was before the Mac was released, 
and the Mac II didn’t come out until early 1987 I think.

Your remembered date is also four years before HyperCard was released. It could 
be that you meant 1993, and it was one of the last Macintosh LC II machines 
that you got. That would certainly have come with HyperCard.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_lc/specs/mac_lc_ii.html


Frankly I wouldn't get picky with Brahmanathaswami about dates: the 
important point about his message has got absolutely nothing to do with 
whether it was 1983, 1993 or, for that matter, 1724!


In 1993 I ended up in a married student "cave" at Southern Illinois 
University with an LC 475 on the desk in front of me and a screaming 7 
month year old next to me (my wife had a Fulbright scholarship);

Hypercard probably prevented me from battering the baby to death!

Richmond.





On Feb 29, 2016, at 11:52 PM, Sannyasin Brahmanathaswami  
wrote:

I think it was circa 1983, I was in San Franscisco...  our spiritual master, Gurudeva, 
called from Hawaii saying "Your Apple II is coming any day. You need to sign up for 
some classes right away... this it the future."

When it came... I think the 3rd thing I did after booting up was start 
Hypercard  and made a button

on mouseup
beep 3 times
end mouse

That was it! I created my first primitive PIM (TO DO list thingy) the next week 
and never looked back!

Time passes (Supercard...Richard Gaskin's pointing the way... Metacard, need for URL 
stuff, windows standalone for volunteers on PC's)  later, the idea of paying for the Indy 
was a "no brainer" and we've bought into every advance payment  plan pitch 
Kevin has proferred since 1997 or so when Scott Raney turned it over...

But it all started with the first button on software pre-loaded with the 
machine.

BR


On February 29, 2016 at 6:07:12 PM, J. Landman Gay 
(jac...@hyperactivesw.com) wrote:

I don't suppose you still have any contacts over at Apple, do you? I
would love to see LC ship with Macs.

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Re: The Future of LiveCode in Education

[RM]

On 1.03.2016 04:19, Jim Hurley wrote:

As programmers, most of us on this list think mainly of programming as a tool 
for solving problems.
Of course, that’s how it was born. The original use of the computer was to 
solve hard science problems.  It was assumed that a couple dozen around the 
world would be sufficient.

But, besides learning how to become programmers there is another important use, 
particularly in education, and that is computer programming as a tooI for 
exploring.

If you’re talking about early education, consideration should be given to 
Turtle Graphics. Yes, that again.
Seymour Papert, a protege of Piaget, founded the  MIT Media Lab. The lab was 
responsible for implementing  LOGO (based on Lisp) and Tuttle Graphics designed 
for young children. As many of you know, I have long been an advocate of 
implementing TG in LC. It is a powerful tool for learning and exploring.

Here, for example, is a book written by two MIT Math professors: Turtle 
Geometry, The Computer as  Medium for Exploring Mathematics. MIT press, 1979. 
(The last chapter  is titled: Curved Space and General Relativity.)

Here are the chapter titles of a book I wrote some years back designed to allow 
students to explore the world of physics: Logo Physics, Holt, Rinehart and 
Winston, 1985

Chapter 1   Vectors
Chapter 2   Equilibrium of forces
Chapter 3   Free fall
Chapter 4   Projectile motion and the CRT
Chapter 5   Projectile motion II
Chapter 6   The monkey, the hunter, and Einstein’s principle of equivalence
Chapter 7   Escape velocity
Chapter 8   Planetary Motion
Chapter 9   The music of the spheres
Chapter 10  Voyager II and lunar orbits
Chapter 11  Jets, rockets, and conservation of momentum
Chapter 12  The harmonic oscillator, clocks, rabbits, and foxes 
(predator-prey simulation)
Chapter 13  The big bang
Chapter 14  Radioactive decay
Chapter 15  Bridges, catenaries, and the perfect arch
Chapter 16  Fishes and optics
Cheater 17  Rainbows

If If we're talking about the “The Future of LiveCode in Education” we 
ought to consider programming as a tool for exploration.
Jim



90% of programming-for-education should be exploration rather than 
coding-qua-coding as
about 90% of school kids are probably not going to go onto careers as 
coders as such

(although they may, like myself, lurk on the peripheries).

As, in the "West" at least, people are getting ever more paranoid about 
children getting their
hands dirty and "risk", the opportunity for kids to "get down-and-dirty" 
with, say, a few bottles of acid,
alkali and a nice, wide selection of 
"only-if-you-are-a-cretin-are-they-really-dangerous" reagents has
been reduced to a big fat zero, the only realistic theatre for 
exploration does seem to be on computers.


LiveCode is the /de facto/ new BASIC, and should be pushed as such.

Richmond.
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Re: The Future of LiveCode in Education

[Sannyasin Brahmanathaswami]

It's been a long time... and to be sure my memory is probably way off...

still:

But we have this from 1986 and I thought (I certainly could be wrong) I was 
already coding in Hypercard for some time ( a year or so I think at least) 
before this:

http://dev.himalayanacademy.com/media/art/photography/mac-connection-1986-winner/mac-connection-1986-winner.jpg

Because I'm sure I was banging out code on a box that did not look like this 
Mac Plus, in 1984-5...

FYI we were the first ever machine-networked desktop publishing operation on 
the planet (or so we were told...it could have been Apple Hype)


On February 29, 2016 at 7:01:40 PM, Colin Holgate 
(colinholg...@gmail.com) wrote:

I’m trying to figure out which bit of information you mistyped. 1983 would be 
fairly late for getting an Apple II, but 1983 was before the Mac was released, 
and the Mac II didn’t come out until early 1987 I think.

Your remembered date is also four years before HyperCard was released. It could 
be that you meant 1993, and it was one of the last Macintosh LC II machines 
that you got. That would certainly have come with HyperCard.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_lc/specs/mac_lc_ii.html
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Re: The Future of LiveCode in Education

[Colin Holgate]

I’m trying to figure out which bit of information you mistyped. 1983 would be 
fairly late for getting an Apple II, but 1983 was before the Mac was released, 
and the Mac II didn’t come out until early 1987 I think.

Your remembered date is also four years before HyperCard was released. It could 
be that you meant 1993, and it was one of the last Macintosh LC II machines 
that you got. That would certainly have come with HyperCard.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_lc/specs/mac_lc_ii.html


> On Feb 29, 2016, at 11:52 PM, Sannyasin Brahmanathaswami  
> wrote:
> 
> I think it was circa 1983, I was in San Franscisco...  our spiritual master, 
> Gurudeva, called from Hawaii saying "Your Apple II is coming any day. You 
> need to sign up for some classes right away... this it the future."
> 
> When it came... I think the 3rd thing I did after booting up was start 
> Hypercard  and made a button
> 
> on mouseup
>beep 3 times
> end mouse
> 
> That was it! I created my first primitive PIM (TO DO list thingy) the next 
> week and never looked back!
> 
> Time passes (Supercard...Richard Gaskin's pointing the way... Metacard, need 
> for URL stuff, windows standalone for volunteers on PC's)  later, the idea of 
> paying for the Indy was a "no brainer" and we've bought into every advance 
> payment  plan pitch Kevin has proferred since 1997 or so when Scott Raney 
> turned it over...
> 
> But it all started with the first button on software pre-loaded with the 
> machine.
> 
> BR
> 
> 
> On February 29, 2016 at 6:07:12 PM, J. Landman Gay 
> (jac...@hyperactivesw.com) wrote:
> 
> I don't suppose you still have any contacts over at Apple, do you? I
> would love to see LC ship with Macs.

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Re: The Future of LiveCode in Education

[Sannyasin Brahmanathaswami]

I think it was circa 1983, I was in San Franscisco...  our spiritual master, 
Gurudeva, called from Hawaii saying "Your Apple II is coming any day. You need 
to sign up for some classes right away... this it the future."

When it came... I think the 3rd thing I did after booting up was start 
Hypercard  and made a button

on mouseup
beep 3 times
end mouse

That was it! I created my first primitive PIM (TO DO list thingy) the next week 
and never looked back!

Time passes (Supercard...Richard Gaskin's pointing the way... Metacard, need 
for URL stuff, windows standalone for volunteers on PC's)  later, the idea of 
paying for the Indy was a "no brainer" and we've bought into every advance 
payment  plan pitch Kevin has proferred since 1997 or so when Scott Raney 
turned it over...

But it all started with the first button on software pre-loaded with the 
machine.

BR


On February 29, 2016 at 6:07:12 PM, J. Landman Gay 
(jac...@hyperactivesw.com) wrote:

I don't suppose you still have any contacts over at Apple, do you? I
would love to see LC ship with Macs.
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Re: The Future of LiveCode in Education

[J. Landman Gay]

On 2/29/2016 3:03 PM, Jeff Reynolds wrote:

So how about LC community shipping on all education macs? or on all
macs for that matter? I think Jacqueline hit it on the head that it
being there and easy to start playing with were the key to HC and the
Mac’s success! Apple needs to continue this tradition and LC fits the
bill. LC made an impression on Apple with getting into the iOS app
development, so its not a total stranger…


I don't suppose you still have any contacts over at Apple, do you? I 
would love to see LC ship with Macs.


--
Jacqueline Landman Gay | jac...@hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software   | http://www.hyperactivesw.com


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Re: The Future of LiveCode in Education

[Jim Hurley]

As programmers, most of us on this list think mainly of programming as a tool 
for solving problems. 
Of course, that’s how it was born. The original use of the computer was to 
solve hard science problems.  It was assumed that a couple dozen around the 
world would be sufficient.

But, besides learning how to become programmers there is another important use, 
particularly in education, and that is computer programming as a tooI for 
exploring.   

If you’re talking about early education, consideration should be given to 
Turtle Graphics. Yes, that again.
Seymour Papert, a protege of Piaget, founded the  MIT Media Lab. The lab was 
responsible for implementing  LOGO (based on Lisp) and Tuttle Graphics designed 
for young children. As many of you know, I have long been an advocate of 
implementing TG in LC. It is a powerful tool for learning and exploring.

Here, for example, is a book written by two MIT Math professors: Turtle 
Geometry, The Computer as  Medium for Exploring Mathematics. MIT press, 1979. 
(The last chapter  is titled: Curved Space and General Relativity.)

Here are the chapter titles of a book I wrote some years back designed to allow 
students to explore the world of physics: Logo Physics, Holt, Rinehart and 
Winston, 1985

Chapter 1   Vectors
Chapter 2   Equilibrium of forces
Chapter 3   Free fall
Chapter 4   Projectile motion and the CRT
Chapter 5   Projectile motion II
Chapter 6   The monkey, the hunter, and Einstein’s principle of equivalence
Chapter 7   Escape velocity
Chapter 8   Planetary Motion
Chapter 9   The music of the spheres
Chapter 10  Voyager II and lunar orbits
Chapter 11  Jets, rockets, and conservation of momentum
Chapter 12  The harmonic oscillator, clocks, rabbits, and foxes 
(predator-prey simulation)
Chapter 13  The big bang
Chapter 14  Radioactive decay
Chapter 15  Bridges, catenaries, and the perfect arch
Chapter 16  Fishes and optics
Cheater 17  Rainbows

If If we're talking about the “The Future of LiveCode in Education” we 
ought to consider programming as a tool for exploration. 
Jim

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Re: The Future of LiveCode in Education

[Monte Goulding]

But a minute x 30 computers for an already overworked class teacher or under 
funded school tech just to do an hour of code type lesson may not happen. 
Ideally there might be an intermediate step between Scratch and the full LC IDE 
using a HTML5 IDE to introduce the language and advertise the full platform.

Cheers

Monte

Sent from my iPhone

> On 1 Mar 2016, at 8:21 AM, Richard Gaskin  wrote:
> 
> Of course it still means download an app, but that's a one-time task and 
> doesn't take but a minute.

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Re: The Future of LiveCode in Education

[Jim Byrnes]

On 02/29/2016 02:16 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:

William Prothero wrote:

 > Richard;
 > Agreed. Perhaps it’s my age. Yes, of course it won’t be a good
 > strategy to compare Livecode to Hypercard. I only brought it up in
 > an attempt to contrast the wide early adoption of Hypercard by
 > educators, to the current environment where there are so many
 > choices and also where knowledge of specific programming languages
 > seems to be tied to employment requirements at some IT companies.
 > That said, I think that livecode has amazing potential in education
 > and elsewhere. I hope to support that.

Personally I see no reason LiveCode can't become the go-to choice for
teaching CS basics.

Right now we see Scratch used for some of that, but the boundaries of
any point-and-click system are encountered pretty quickly.  For young
users it can be a good starting point, but most outgrow it fairly quickly.

I've seen some who move students directly from Scratch to JavaScript or
even Java, and I'm no educator but I've read just enough Piaget to
believe that's not a good choice.

By far the most popular learning language today is Python, which is in
most respects a pretty great language.  But the distance between "I want
to build an app" and "Look, I built an app!" needs to be as short as
possible to keep young learners engaged, and since Python follows the
traditional approach of treating UI as an afterthought a lot of
foundational work needs to be done with learners before they can build
even a simple app.


Funny you mention Python.  I learned of Livecode's existence on on 
Python list.  Someone was looking for a drag and drop UI builder and 
someone said it wasn't python, but Livecode seemed to be what he was 
looking for.


Regards,  Jim



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Re: The Future of LiveCode in Education

[Richard Gaskin]

Monte Goulding wrote:

> My son regularly immerses in Scratch. There’s a couple of things
> that make it a good learning environment beyond the drag and drop
> code blocks:
>  - web based so no download and install for schools without the
>resources to do that easily
>  - a tightly integrated project sharing and social network of users
>
> Now that we have HTML 5 it may be possible to cover these points and
> we are at least part way there on the sharing front. It would be nice
> to be able to sandbox code to a particular group if we wanted a
> single stack IDE that might work on tablets and in the browser. Some
> kind of canModify for a group in a cantModify stack might be nice too…

With LC's securityPermissions it's possible to deliver an app that's 
more secure than any browser.


Leaving only "network" enabled in securityPermissions, a standalone can 
download stacks, save data and code in the cloud, and never touch the 
local drive.


Of course it still means download an app, but that's a one-time task and 
doesn't take but a minute.


And with html later on it only gets easier.


> Anyway, the other point I wanted to make is I think we could do well
> to actively target a Scratch -> LiveCode transition. One way would be
> to import a user’s projects into LiveCode from Scratch via the
> Scratch API and some well commented code generation: > 
http://wiki.scratch.mit.edu/wiki/Scratch_API_(2.0)


That would be cool.

I wonder how hard it would be to build a Scratch-like system that reads 
Scratch files directly in LC


--
 Richard Gaskin
 Fourth World Systems
 Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
 
 ambassa...@fourthworld.comhttp://www.FourthWorld.com


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Re: The Future of LiveCode in Education

[William Prothero]

Jeff:
Hmm…. I am developing an app, rewritten from Director, that I am calling “Earth 
Explorer”. Am I infringing? I probably got hold of you CDROM in the ancient 
past, though. 

My first version of my “Earth Explorer” app (was named differently then) was 
actually written in Hypercard. Then ported to Supercard, then to Director. 
Gaads, will I never stop porting this resource? Of course, now the data are 
much more up to date.

A link to a video describing my first version that was written in LC is at:
http://earthednet.org/ptExplorer/Cover.html 

Now, I’ve made a lot of improvements and am adding resources to make it ready 
for wider (free) availability.
Best,
Bill

> On Feb 29, 2016, at 1:03 PM, Jeff Reynolds  wrote:
> 
> Yes was true for me as well even though i had programmed in a few different 
> languages in the past. At the time HC came out i was in grad school 
> {molecular biology) and not programming. After 10 minutes of looking at HC 
> and poking at it i realized how much fun and useful things i could do so 
> quickly and easily. Like Jacqueline I did not think in a few years that HC 
> (and later MC, then LC) would be one of the main things i would do in my work 
> for the next 25+ years of multimedia and exhibit design and production!
> 
> Years later HC was the system I did one of Apple’s first (and very few) 
> Multimedia CD-ROMs (Earth Explorer). Everyone, including Apple (I had to 
> convince them and they were a little chagrinned I had to convince them!), 
> thought it could run on HC and not require C++. Programming and debugging 
> costs would have been much higher if we had! I would have never gotten on 
> that path if HC was not preinstalled on that little Mac plus…
> 
> The CD-ROM sold very well at the height of the CD-ROM boom there, but had 
> only a minor impact in Education as only a fraction of schools had the money 
> to spend buying the copies they needed even with the package deals Apple ed 
> had. But within a year of so they started shipping the CD-ROM with every 
> school mac. This made a profound impact in education for a few years as it 
> was out there all over the place being use and not costing the schools 
> effectively (and could be used on older equipment by sharing the cdrom). I 
> think our company made way more at the dollar a disc bulk license than they 
> ever did with the retail and education sales that has all sorts of costs 
> associated eating up the larger profit margin! for Apple the dollar or two 
> increase was minimal in a computer’s cost and it got them lots of good will 
> from the schools as well as a positive impact on providing great content to 
> the schools not really available elsewhere at the time. Again would not have 
> happened if not shipped with every education mac.
> 
> So how about LC community shipping on all education macs? or on all macs for 
> that matter? I think Jacqueline hit it on the head that it being there and 
> easy to start playing with were the key to HC and the Mac’s success! Apple 
> needs to continue this tradition and LC fits the bill. LC made an impression 
> on Apple with getting into the iOS app development, so its not a total 
> stranger…
> 
> cheers
> 
> jeff
> 
> 
> 

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Re: The Future of LiveCode in Education

[Jeff Reynolds]

Yes was true for me as well even though i had programmed in a few different 
languages in the past. At the time HC came out i was in grad school {molecular 
biology) and not programming. After 10 minutes of looking at HC and poking at 
it i realized how much fun and useful things i could do so quickly and easily. 
Like Jacqueline I did not think in a few years that HC (and later MC, then LC) 
would be one of the main things i would do in my work for the next 25+ years of 
multimedia and exhibit design and production!

Years later HC was the system I did one of Apple’s first (and very few) 
Multimedia CD-ROMs (Earth Explorer). Everyone, including Apple (I had to 
convince them and they were a little chagrinned I had to convince them!), 
thought it could run on HC and not require C++. Programming and debugging costs 
would have been much higher if we had! I would have never gotten on that path 
if HC was not preinstalled on that little Mac plus…

The CD-ROM sold very well at the height of the CD-ROM boom there, but had only 
a minor impact in Education as only a fraction of schools had the money to 
spend buying the copies they needed even with the package deals Apple ed had. 
But within a year of so they started shipping the CD-ROM with every school mac. 
This made a profound impact in education for a few years as it was out there 
all over the place being use and not costing the schools effectively (and could 
be used on older equipment by sharing the cdrom). I think our company made way 
more at the dollar a disc bulk license than they ever did with the retail and 
education sales that has all sorts of costs associated eating up the larger 
profit margin! for Apple the dollar or two increase was minimal in a computer’s 
cost and it got them lots of good will from the schools as well as a positive 
impact on providing great content to the schools not really available elsewhere 
at the time. Again would not have happened if not shipped with every education 
mac.

So how about LC community shipping on all education macs? or on all macs for 
that matter? I think Jacqueline hit it on the head that it being there and easy 
to start playing with were the key to HC and the Mac’s success! Apple needs to 
continue this tradition and LC fits the bill. LC made an impression on Apple 
with getting into the iOS app development, so its not a total stranger…

cheers

jeff




> On Feb 29, 2016, at 3:13 PM, use-livecode-requ...@lists.runrev.com wrote:
> 
> HyperCard took off because it shipped free on every Mac. That's 
> certainly the reason I started with it, because I never in a million 
> years thought I'd like programming. But it was there on our new Mac so I 
> started exploring. The language was easily grasped and there were dozens 
> of examples to look at. I got hooked immediately.
> 
> If HC hadn't been there right in front of me I never would have touched 
> it, no matter how many glowing reports I might have read about it 
> elsewhere. I was positive that programming wasn't something I was suited 
> for. I am also sure that's what happened with all the thousands of new 
> HC users who never dreamed they could produce their own software.
> 
> -- 
> Jacqueline Landman Gay | jac...@hyperactivesw.com 
> 
> HyperActive Software   | http://www.hyperactivesw.com 
> 
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Re: The Future of LiveCode in Education

[William Prothero]

Richard:
Agreed. It always seemed odd to me that I had to rebuild, for every app, 
standard UI interfaces that most folks use. The Widgets capability in LC is 
masterful. It’s definitely a biggie.

My problem is getting my friends to actually try Livecode. I think I’ll need to 
do a bit of demo-ing of my own app and selling at UCSB to get interest.

One drum I am beating hard on this list is how badly there needs to be an 
interface to the commonly used Learning Management Systems, like Moodle 
(“Common Cartridge”, LTI, etc). I am simply loathe to dip my toes into that 
world. But perhaps, I’m just apprehensive of the “crocodiles” lurking beneath 
the surface. Looking further into this topic is on my “to do” list though.

Best,
Bill

> On Feb 29, 2016, at 12:16 PM, Richard Gaskin  
> wrote:
> 
> William Prothero wrote:
> 
> > Richard;
> > Agreed. Perhaps it’s my age. Yes, of course it won’t be a good
> > strategy to compare Livecode to Hypercard. I only brought it up in
> > an attempt to contrast the wide early adoption of Hypercard by
> > educators, to the current environment where there are so many
> > choices and also where knowledge of specific programming languages
> > seems to be tied to employment requirements at some IT companies.
> > That said, I think that livecode has amazing potential in education
> > and elsewhere. I hope to support that.
> 
> Personally I see no reason LiveCode can't become the go-to choice for 
> teaching CS basics.
> 
> Right now we see Scratch used for some of that, but the boundaries of any 
> point-and-click system are encountered pretty quickly.  For young users it 
> can be a good starting point, but most outgrow it fairly quickly.
> 
> I've seen some who move students directly from Scratch to JavaScript or even 
> Java, and I'm no educator but I've read just enough Piaget to believe that's 
> not a good choice.
> 
> By far the most popular learning language today is Python, which is in most 
> respects a pretty great language.  But the distance between "I want to build 
> an app" and "Look, I built an app!" needs to be as short as possible to keep 
> young learners engaged, and since Python follows the traditional approach of 
> treating UI as an afterthought a lot of foundational work needs to be done 
> with learners before they can build even a simple app.
> 
> With LC, of course, the UI stuff is as deeply integrated directly in the 
> language as event handlers and control structures, so the programming logic 
> tends to reflect the end-user experience more than how the computer delivers 
> that experience.  And since all of us use computers, it seems to gel more 
> quickly to work from a UI-centric perspective.
> 
> -- 
> Richard Gaskin
> Fourth World Systems
> Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
> 
> ambassa...@fourthworld.comhttp://www.FourthWorld.com
> 
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Re: The Future of LiveCode in Education

[Monte Goulding]

> On 1 Mar 2016, at 7:16 AM, Richard Gaskin  wrote:
> 
> Right now we see Scratch used for some of that, but the boundaries of any 
> point-and-click system are encountered pretty quickly.  For young users it 
> can be a good starting point, but most outgrow it fairly quickly.

My son regularly immerses in Scratch. There’s a couple of things that make it a 
good learning environment beyond the drag and drop code blocks:
 - web based so no download and install for schools without the resources to do 
that easily
 - a tightly integrated project sharing and social network of users

Now that we have HTML 5 it may be possible to cover these points and we are at 
least part way there on the sharing front. It would be nice to be able to 
sandbox code to a particular group if we wanted a single stack IDE that might 
work on tablets and in the browser. Some kind of canModify for a group in a 
cantModify stack might be nice too…

Anyway, the other point I wanted to make is I think we could do well to 
actively target a Scratch -> LiveCode transition. One way would be to import a 
user’s projects into LiveCode from Scratch via the Scratch API and some well 
commented code generation: http://wiki.scratch.mit.edu/wiki/Scratch_API_(2.0) 


Cheers

Monte
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Re: The Future of LiveCode in Education

[Richard Gaskin]

William Prothero wrote:

> Richard;
> Agreed. Perhaps it’s my age. Yes, of course it won’t be a good
> strategy to compare Livecode to Hypercard. I only brought it up in
> an attempt to contrast the wide early adoption of Hypercard by
> educators, to the current environment where there are so many
> choices and also where knowledge of specific programming languages
> seems to be tied to employment requirements at some IT companies.
> That said, I think that livecode has amazing potential in education
> and elsewhere. I hope to support that.

Personally I see no reason LiveCode can't become the go-to choice for 
teaching CS basics.


Right now we see Scratch used for some of that, but the boundaries of 
any point-and-click system are encountered pretty quickly.  For young 
users it can be a good starting point, but most outgrow it fairly quickly.


I've seen some who move students directly from Scratch to JavaScript or 
even Java, and I'm no educator but I've read just enough Piaget to 
believe that's not a good choice.


By far the most popular learning language today is Python, which is in 
most respects a pretty great language.  But the distance between "I want 
to build an app" and "Look, I built an app!" needs to be as short as 
possible to keep young learners engaged, and since Python follows the 
traditional approach of treating UI as an afterthought a lot of 
foundational work needs to be done with learners before they can build 
even a simple app.


With LC, of course, the UI stuff is as deeply integrated directly in the 
language as event handlers and control structures, so the programming 
logic tends to reflect the end-user experience more than how the 
computer delivers that experience.  And since all of us use computers, 
it seems to gel more quickly to work from a UI-centric perspective.


--
 Richard Gaskin
 Fourth World Systems
 Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
 
 ambassa...@fourthworld.comhttp://www.FourthWorld.com

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Re: The Future of LiveCode in Education

[William Prothero]

Richard;
Agreed. Perhaps it’s my age. Yes, of course it won’t be a good strategy to 
compare Livecode to Hypercard. I only brought it up in an attempt to contrast 
the wide early adoption of Hypercard by educators, to the current environment 
where there are so many choices and also where knowledge of specific 
programming languages seems to be tied to employment requirements at some IT 
companies. That said, I think that livecode has amazing potential in education 
and elsewhere. I hope to support that.
Best,
Bill

> On Feb 29, 2016, at 11:53 AM, Richard Gaskin  
> wrote:
> 
> William Prothero wrote:
> 
> > For those already familiar with other programming languages (I’m
> > in that group), the syntax may look archaic and put folks off. It
> > did me, at first. I was used to Fortran, Pascal, C, Lingo, etc,
> > and the Hypercard syntax just seemed primitive compared to modern
> > object-oriented syntax. BUT, when I looked at what Livecode was
> > capable of, its future, and it’s features and lack of limitations
> > that affected my goals, I became an avid user.
> 
> FWIW when I present LC at conferences I never mention HyperCard or HyperTalk, 
> unless of course someone brings it up specifically during Q&A.
> 
> Comparing a vibrant, living system to one whose owner chose to kill it rarely 
> makes for a useful story. :)
> 
> Besides, most folks today have never used HyperCard, and it's getting ever 
> rarer that people I meet have even heard of it.
> 
> I've found it better to compare it to things they know, e.g.:
> 
> "It's event-drive like JavaScript, but with more intuitive syntax, esp for 
> object references: rather than constantly typing 
> 'document.getElementByID(tElemID)' I just type 'field 1'".
> 
> "It's at least as easy to learn as Python if not easier, but has GUI objects 
> built in as direct language elements rather than tacked on later  as an 
> afterthought through someone else's external package, so your UI code flows 
> as smoothly as your business logic."
> 
> "It's as productive as VB and in some ways more so, but isn't limited to a 
> single vendor's OS, deploying to Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and Raspberry Pi 
> as well - with a Server version too."
> 
> -- 
> Richard Gaskin
> Fourth World Systems
> Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
> 
> ambassa...@fourthworld.comhttp://www.FourthWorld.com
> 
> 
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Re: The Future of LiveCode in Education

[J. Landman Gay]

On 2/29/2016 1:25 PM, William Prothero wrote:

By the way, I too have pondered the popularity that Hypercard was
able to achieve and compared it to Livecode. Certainly, a subset of
livecode and hypercard are pretty identical. So, why isn’t it easier
to get excited about it?


HyperCard took off because it shipped free on every Mac. That's 
certainly the reason I started with it, because I never in a million 
years thought I'd like programming. But it was there on our new Mac so I 
started exploring. The language was easily grasped and there were dozens 
of examples to look at. I got hooked immediately.


If HC hadn't been there right in front of me I never would have touched 
it, no matter how many glowing reports I might have read about it 
elsewhere. I was positive that programming wasn't something I was suited 
for. I am also sure that's what happened with all the thousands of new 
HC users who never dreamed they could produce their own software.


--
Jacqueline Landman Gay | jac...@hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software   | http://www.hyperactivesw.com


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Re: The Future of LiveCode in Education

[Richard Gaskin]

William Prothero wrote:

> For those already familiar with other programming languages (I’m
> in that group), the syntax may look archaic and put folks off. It
> did me, at first. I was used to Fortran, Pascal, C, Lingo, etc,
> and the Hypercard syntax just seemed primitive compared to modern
> object-oriented syntax. BUT, when I looked at what Livecode was
> capable of, its future, and it’s features and lack of limitations
> that affected my goals, I became an avid user.

FWIW when I present LC at conferences I never mention HyperCard or 
HyperTalk, unless of course someone brings it up specifically during Q&A.


Comparing a vibrant, living system to one whose owner chose to kill it 
rarely makes for a useful story. :)


Besides, most folks today have never used HyperCard, and it's getting 
ever rarer that people I meet have even heard of it.


I've found it better to compare it to things they know, e.g.:

"It's event-drive like JavaScript, but with more intuitive syntax, esp 
for object references: rather than constantly typing 
'document.getElementByID(tElemID)' I just type 'field 1'".


"It's at least as easy to learn as Python if not easier, but has GUI 
objects built in as direct language elements rather than tacked on later 
 as an afterthought through someone else's external package, so your UI 
code flows as smoothly as your business logic."


"It's as productive as VB and in some ways more so, but isn't limited to 
a single vendor's OS, deploying to Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and 
Raspberry Pi as well - with a Server version too."


--
 Richard Gaskin
 Fourth World Systems
 Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
 
 ambassa...@fourthworld.comhttp://www.FourthWorld.com


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Re: The Future of LiveCode in Education

[William Prothero]

Stephen:
Wonderful work you’ve done with Livecode and medical education. FYI, there’s a 
forum topic at;
http://forums.livecode.com/viewforum.php?f=107 


The forum addresses the topic of getting teachers involved. Your introductory 
book on livecode looks like just the ticket for new livecoders.

By the way, I too have pondered the popularity that Hypercard was able to 
achieve and compared it to Livecode. Certainly, a subset of livecode and 
hypercard are pretty identical. So, why isn’t it easier to get excited about 
it? I have some thoughts. First, there are other, competing platforms. Once a 
person learns one platform, they get “locked in” and find no reason to learn 
another. There is also the forest and trees effect, which you mention. That is 
the fewer options and commands in Hypercard compared to the 2,000 in Livecode. 
Livecode looks more intimidating than Hypercard did.

If you divide users between those experienced in programming, and those 
inexperienced in programming, there are going to be different challenges 
getting folks hooked. For those already familiar with other programming 
languages (I’m in that group), the syntax may look archaic and put folks off. 
It did me, at first. I was used to Fortran, Pascal, C, Lingo, etc, and the 
Hypercard syntax just seemed primitive compared to modern object-oriented 
syntax. BUT, when I looked at what Livecode was capable of, its future, and 
it’s features and lack of limitations that affected my goals, I became an avid 
user. For those who have no programming experience, I really don’t think the 
syntax will trigger the kind of resistance it did in me. For experienced 
programmers, it may require more of a hard sell. The widgets and powerful 
interface creation tools are very big, as far as I’m concerned. The open source 
version is wonderful too and removes an initial financial hurdle.

As was in Hypercard, I believe that educators and their students are a ripe 
pool of possible new LiveCode users. Also, your beginners book is a resource 
that should be put out in front so potential new users can find it. Perhaps, in 
your book, there could also be a chapter that dangles the advanced applications 
that could be, and have been built, to inspire further study.

Best,
Bill

William Prothero, Ph.D.
University of California, Santa Barbara, Emeritus
proth...@earthednet.org



> On Feb 29, 2016, at 7:33 AM, stgoldb...@aol.com wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> What does LiveCode need to do to significantly increase its audience among 
> teachers and students of computer programming?
> 
> 
> I  taught medical students for 25 years at the University of Miami School of 
> Medicine. LiveCode has provided an opportunity to further improve medical 
> education.
> 
> My students, as well as others around the USA, have appreciated these 
> efforts. I received the George Paff Award for Best Teacher 11 times at the 
> University of Miami School of Medicine. I also received an unprecedented 
> invitation to be the keynote speaker at the graduating class commencement of 
> the Washington University at St. Louis School of Medicine, one of the most 
> prestigious medical schools in the US. The reason for the invite was for 
> contributions to medical education, part of which included development of 
> educational software.
> 
> I am president of the Medmaster medical publishing company and have used 
> LiveCode to create and distribute many educational programs, some of which 
> are available free for download at www.medmaster.net/freedownloads.html, 
> while others of a more complex nature are incorporated into Medmaster books 
> (I provide links below for the LiveCode readers of this forum):
> 
> Atlas of Microbiology (free).  I created this LiveCode program to accompany 
> Medmaster’s book, Clinical Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple, which is 
> the best-selling microbiology book in the US. It links to the internet for 
> pictures and descriptions of all microbial organisms and diseases.
> 
> Atlas of Human Diseases (free).  This LiveCode program encompasses over 
> 10,000 known diseases in the world, with links to pictures and text on the 
> Internet. It may well be the largest atlas of its kind, the equivalent of 
> many thousands of printed pages, encompassing the vast array human diseases, 
> hereditary and non-hereditary. It took only a few days of programming using 
> LiveCode once the disease list was put together.
> 
> Neurologic Localization. This LiveCode program accompanies my book Clinical 
> Neuroanatomy Made Ridiculously, which for many years has been a best-seller 
> in the field. It provides the student with a thorough approach to the anatomy 
> of the nervous system and localization of neurologic diseases, along with a 
> complete lab course and quiz in neurologic localization.
> 
> Heart Sounds & Images is a LiveCode program that accompanies Medmaster’s book 
> Clinical Cardiology Made Ridiculously Simple, wh

Re: The Future of LiveCode in Education

[stgoldb...@aol.com]

What does LiveCode need to do to significantly increase its audience among 
teachers and students of computer programming?


I  taught medical students for 25 years at the University of Miami School of 
Medicine. LiveCode has provided an opportunity to further improve medical 
education.

My students, as well as others around the USA, have appreciated these efforts. 
I received the George Paff Award for Best Teacher 11 times at the University of 
Miami School of Medicine. I also received an unprecedented invitation to be the 
keynote speaker at the graduating class commencement of the Washington 
University at St. Louis School of Medicine, one of the most prestigious medical 
schools in the US. The reason for the invite was for contributions to medical 
education, part of which included development of educational software.

I am president of the Medmaster medical publishing company and have used 
LiveCode to create and distribute many educational programs, some of which are 
available free for download at www.medmaster.net/freedownloads.html, while 
others of a more complex nature are incorporated into Medmaster books (I 
provide links below for the LiveCode readers of this forum):

Atlas of Microbiology (free).  I created this LiveCode program to accompany 
Medmaster’s book, Clinical Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple, which is the 
best-selling microbiology book in the US. It links to the internet for pictures 
and descriptions of all microbial organisms and diseases.

Atlas of Human Diseases (free).  This LiveCode program encompasses over 10,000 
known diseases in the world, with links to pictures and text on the Internet. 
It may well be the largest atlas of its kind, the equivalent of many thousands 
of printed pages, encompassing the vast array human diseases, hereditary and 
non-hereditary. It took only a few days of programming using LiveCode once the 
disease list was put together.

Neurologic Localization. This LiveCode program accompanies my book Clinical 
Neuroanatomy Made Ridiculously, which for many years has been a best-seller in 
the field. It provides the student with a thorough approach to the anatomy of 
the nervous system and localization of neurologic diseases, along with a 
complete lab course and quiz in neurologic localization.

Heart Sounds & Images is a LiveCode program that accompanies Medmaster’s book 
Clinical Cardiology Made Ridiculously Simple, which is presently the 
best-selling Cardiology book in the US. It provides a tutorial of many hundreds 
of examples of electrocardiograms, x-rays, angiograms, echocardiograms, and 
heart sounds.

Other LiveCode programs I have written include:
Differential Diagnosis (for Clinical Pathophysiology MRS)
Atlas of Dermatology
Atlas of Pathology (for Pathology MRS)
Atlas of Normal Radiology (for Clinical Anatomy MRS)
Atlas of Clinical Radiology (for Clinical Radiology MRS)
MedSearcher (search engines in medicine)
USMLE Step 1, Step 2, and NCLEX-RN Question Banks

Everyone has their own forte. I am not an IT person, but rather a teacher. My 
own strength is in understanding how to teach students learning a subject for 
the first time, which is Medmaster’s mission and the reason for its success 
through the years. Medical (and other) students are overwhelmed by the 
information explosion, a problem that permeates education at every level. 
Medmaster has dealt with the problem with books that are brief, clinically 
relevant, and interesting. Most medical students in the US are familiar with 
the Medmaster “Made Ridiculously Simple” series, of which LiveCode is a part.

Given the extraordinary power of LiveCode, it seems strange that so few people 
know about it, even after it has been around for many years. I went into my 
local Apple store a short time ago and the people behind the genius bar had not 
heard of it. Why not? Why aren’t many more programmers and teachers using it, 
like they did when Apple’s HyperCard first came out? The word-of-mouth is not 
great. I think there are two main reasons. LiveCode needs better documentation 
and freedom from bugs:

1. Documentation. The HyperCard language had only about 150 words. LiveCode has 
over 2000. It can be difficult for a programming newcomer to get started 
learning LiveCode for lack of a basic “Getting Started” book. You find all 
kinds of programming books in bookstores, but few if any about LiveCode basics. 
One can’t just tell a potential user to open and study the massive, however 
excellent, LiveCode dictionary. It’s too overwhelming. Nor is it adequate to 
post non-linear lessons online that have multiple links. It is too easy to get 
lost in them. The teacher and student need a small, clear, practical linear 
book that focuses on the basics of LiveCode’s interface and scripting. The 
LiveCode company wants to attract more new users. It has been relatively easy 
for the old guard who grew up with HyperCard to switch to LiveCode, which has a 
similar scripting language, but it