Programming language for children

[Tony Baldwin]

Karl F. Larsen wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

> 
> 	Today on Ubuntu you get a free C and C++ compiler and there are a 100
> books out there that go from a Graduate School to Child level. Those who
> say you never get to see anything have not remembered the first thing
> you do. You write Hello World! And the kids like that it will keep
> printing that forever!
> 
> 	The person who says you launch right into pointers is wrong. But
> pointers can be learned by Children if taught right. A pointer is a call
> that simply calls what is in a location, but the kids call them buckets.
> 
> 73 Karl
> 

I had been using gnu/linux for about 9 years before I even learned to 
write a bash script, but about 1.5 years ago I finally decided it was 
time to learn some scripting & programming (mostly because there was 
software I wanted that didn't exist, so I created it 
http://www.transprocalc.org).
I first tried to start learning to program in C.
That lasted all of about 2 weeks.  I was so painfully bored, and 
learning enough to create what I wanted seemed like it would take years.

I also made a half-hearted attempt to get into java, but the results 
weren't much better.

I then discovered tcl/tk, and was releasing software to the community 
within months (http://www.baldwinsoftware.com).
I'm now attempting to learn perl and python, as well.

With tcl/tk it is very easy to begin learning to create useful, 
graphical applications in a short time, yet, it is a very powerful 
language.  Why it is so underrated, I do not understand.

My nephew (http://staticfree.info/~samuel/) writes in perl.  I read his 
perl code (and understand it!) and write similar applications, with more 
features, in tcl/tk, just to annoy the kid (and encourage his continued 
hacking exploits...the kid's a genius).

Had I stuck with trying to learn C, I'd probably still barely be beyond 
the "Hello, World!" stage (not that I'm a real hacker yet, but I've 
learned quite a bit in a short time, and credit tcl/tk with making that 
both easy and fun).

Now I write scripts to automate all kinds of stuff, and continue to play 
with writing tcl/tk apps, and, as mentioned, am branching out to other 
languages.

/tony

-- 
http://www.cafepress.com/binbeer
01001001 00100111 01101100 01101100 00100000 01110100 01100101 01101100 
01101100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110111 01101000 
01100001 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01101101 01100101 
01100001 01101110 01110011 00100000 01101001 01100110 00100000 01111001 
01101111 01110101 00100111 01101100 01101100 00100000 01100010 01110101 
01111001 00100000 01101101 01100101 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100010 
01100101 01100101 01110010 00101110