Programming language for children

[Piper]

This is a very interesting computer problem. Thank you for presenting it. 
However, the moderator here may decide that it is not a Ubuntu technical 
issue.

Are you in Sweden? First, what is "higher language" when it comes to 
machines? Discuss that with your daughters.
The expression "machine language" is technical and it is reserved for binary 
language, said by computer scientists to be the lowest level language. Could 
it actually be the highest?

According to computing science, there is a continuum of "languages of the 
machine" from binary machine language to human language. WHICH human 
language? Why not Swedish? If proximity to Swedish is the measure of 
higher-lower language then where do we place English by comparison? Russian? 
French? German? C language which is among the languages compiled by the .NET 
compiler on this machine is said to be an "intermediate" language, ie it is 
not as high or as close to English as other computing languages. But that 
does not say where it places compared to Swedish.

Maybe we can make this thread relevant to the present list. I was in Future 
Shop recently and the salesman commented that some of their mini-machines 
carry "Linux Mobile" OS. What if such a machine uses text to speech SW to 
say, "Hello, my name is Ubuntu. I operate this machine so I am called an 
operating system. How may I help you?"

If Ubuntu says only that in a human language then it is speaking at a "high" 
level already. Let us assume that Ubuntu aspires to learn more human 
language. How would your daughters teach it more human language? (Swedish 
or?)

Now you have a technical computer problem. How do you teach Ubuntu to 
respond to the more commonly asked questions for someone new to a Linux OS? 
Those questions are probably similar in Sweden, China or Nigeria so as you 
teach Ubuntu these Q-A sets, you also help those who wish to have some 
multi-lingual ability.

Piper


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kjetil Halvorsen" <kjetil1001 at gmail.com>
To: "Ubuntu user technical support, not for general discussions" 
<ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>
Sent: Saturday, June 13, 2009 10:26 AM
Subject: Programming language for children


>I want to try to learn my daughters some programming language. (they
> are 13,14 years)
> In earlier times I would have thought about logo. What programming
> language, available in ubuntu,
> would you propose for this in our time?
>
> Kjetil
>
> -- 
> "... an entire human genome would fit on a music CD."
>
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