Cool Links Evan, Since before personal computers existed I have dreamed of what computers could be capable of. In the education and learning space I expected to see beautiful representations of complex processes and systems we could play with and thus gain a much deeper understanding. Sadly this is very uncommon and learning has not made much use of computers to this day. Many examples are quite pathetic and not much more than PDF versions :) your examples and work seem to me to be finally moving in the direction I expected as a somewhat naive 11 year old. So sad we still don't have something an 11 year old imagined 30+ years ago.
If someone believes computers have improved the way we learn to a great extent, I would like to suggests it is only because they have a lack of imagination. Nice Work Tony On Sunday, May 13, 2018 at 4:20:11 AM UTC+10, Evan Balster wrote: > > Hello, all — > > Regarding what I mean by "computational notebooks" and why I took the time > to write a robust math plugin: > > I think it's really valuable to be able to interactively model information > as part of a note-taking and problem-solving process. TiddlyWiki was > already very good at doing this for qualitative information, so I made > effort to round out those capabilities for quantitative information. My > plugin is "spreadsheet-like" because information auto-refreshes like > anything else in a TiddlyWiki. I never actually implemented a spreadsheet > UI for it. Why would I? — tiddlers and fields already work like rows and > columns. > > I'm a C++ programmer (8 years full-time experience including compiler > design, DSP, rendering engines, multithreading), but I don't think > imperative languages like C++ or Python are ideal for what I call > "computational notetaking". This is because it takes substantial mental > effort to design the execution flow, state management and data structures > in an imperative language, and this means breaking away from the topic of > the notetaking. People who use spreadsheets don't think of themselves as > programmers because they don't have to do that kind of juggling, but it's > possible to design extremely complicated software in that environment. The > key difference is that you can focus on one small element at a time without > getting tangled up in the architecture of your program. Less cognitive > load there means more sustained attention toward understanding a problem > which may already be straining one's cognitive faculties — and as somebody > who gets into that situation often with my research, I think that has the > potential to expand my capability to think and solve complex problems. > > As much as I've discussed improving TiddlyWiki's scalability, I don't > think computational notetaking tools must be useful for designing > applications or scalable software. "Notebook" implies to me that the > contents might exist for the sole benefit of the person using it, and that > the information is easy to pass around. > > > (For more on the "interactive modeling" I'm talking about, look into > explorable > explanations <http://explorabl.es/>. I've designed many interactive > models for my own use with imperative languages, and have prototyped some > explorables > <http://evanbalster.com/tiddlywiki/formulas.html#Real%20Projective%20Line:%5B%5BReal%20Projective%20Line%5D%5D%20%5B%5BHarmonic%20Lattice%5D%5D> > > with my plugin.) > > > On Saturday, 12 May 2018 12:56:52 UTC-5, Mark S. wrote: >> >> "It pairs the functionality of word processing >> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_processor> software with both the >> shell <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_(computing)> and kernel >> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_(operating_system)> of that >> notebook's programming language >> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language>." >> >> That sounds a lot like TW. TW would need a math plugin to easily get to >> the "computational" part. Possibly a platform for students or fieldworkers >> collecting data. >> >> -- Mark >> >> On Saturday, May 12, 2018 at 10:33:53 AM UTC-7, @TiddlyTweeter wrote: >>> >>> If you wondering what a "Computational Notebook" is and what the current >>> enthusiasm about them is about, read ... >>> >>> 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notebook_interface ... which shows >>> the idea is not new, and immediately you can see that TW can be that ... >>> >>> 2 - https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01676633/document ... a very >>> good academic text about them. >>> >> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/3417a114-f7c1-4f29-bfdd-7c3d10cfa449%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
