"Easy" coding



  • Free tool offers 'easy' coding

    I shudder when I read something like that...is this the specter of "VB6 is easy" renewed?  (Not a slam on VB6, but on how so many picked up bad habits because of how it was "taught").

    Fortunately, there seems to be very little actual coding (in the traditional sense) going on, and it's directed to kids anyway.


     

     



  • Sounds like the software I had around, oh, 1986 or so that let you create your own Bugs Bunny cartoons.  Man, it took forever to "compile" the animation on the 286 or whatever we had at the time.  Kids these days have it so easy...

     



  • Watch the video here:

    There have been dozens of attempts at making programming accessible to kids.  This looks better than most.  I'm impressed.
     



  • As this is clearly intended for kids and with a specific set of projects in mind, I don't see much danger of abuse. And like the previous poster said, for this purpose, it's actually a pretty nice solution.

    Tho I bet a full-fledged busyness application programmed with this would make an awesome desktop wallpaper...



  • Not that I've actually looked at it, but is this like those game constructor toolkits you used to get back in the (good old) C64/Amiga days?



  • This is decidedly not a WTF.  It's a neat app in the tradition of Logo or Squeak that's aimed at getting kids into programming at an early age.  Very cool



  • @tiro said:

    This is decidedly not a WTF.  It's a neat app in the tradition of Logo or Squeak that's aimed at getting kids into programming at an early age.  Very cool

    True, it's not a WTF.  Should have been posted under general discussion.  That's the second time in a month I've done that.



  • If anyone actually uses this for business applications, there will be casualties.



  • It looks like it's considerably better then "Alice" which we had to suffer through in intro to CS.



  • Way back in the 1980's a friend of mine saw a demonstration at a trade show of a revolutionary new database system.  All you had to do was ask questions in normal English sentences.  You didn't have to know anything about programming.  Anyone could use this system.

    The demo was loaded with geographical information such as the heights of all the mountains in the world.

    My friend typed:

    What are the five highest mountains in Europe and Africa?

    The computer responded:

    There are no mountains in Europe and Africa.

     


  • Considered Harmful

    @newfweiler said:

    Way back in the 1980's a friend of mine saw a demonstration at a trade show of a revolutionary new database system.  All you had to do was ask questions in normal English sentences.  You didn't have to know anything about programming.  Anyone could use this system.

    The demo was loaded with geographical information such as the heights of all the mountains in the world.

    My friend typed:

    What are the five highest mountains in Europe and Africa?

    The computer responded:

    There are no mountains in Europe and Africa.

     

    Clearly your friend should have used "or" instead of "and."  This story sounds familiar...  Have you posted it before?



  • @joe.edwards@imaginuity.com said:

    @newfweiler said:

    Way back in the 1980's a friend of mine saw a demonstration at a trade show of a revolutionary new database system.  All you had to do was ask questions in normal English sentences.  You didn't have to know anything about programming.  Anyone could use this system.

    The demo was loaded with geographical information such as the heights of all the mountains in the world.

    My friend typed:

    What are the five highest mountains in Europe and Africa?

    The computer responded:

    There are no mountains in Europe and Africa.

     

    Clearly your friend should have used "or" instead of "and."  This story sounds familiar...  Have you posted it before?

    I probably did, somewhere or another.  It's relevant here too.  I suppose I need to explain it, though, because apparently the point is easily missed.

    My friend was a programmer and fully understood the difference between "or" and "and".  However, the product's marketers did not understand the difference between formal logic (as used by programmers, supposedly NOT the target market) and informal English (as used by non-technical people, supposedly the target market).

    "What are the five highest mountains in Europe and Africa?" is a perfectly reasonable, intelligible English question.  It is ambiguous, but when you hear it you automatically reject the parsings that seem to ask for absurd or noninformative results (e.g., "What are the five highest mountains, each of which is located both in Africa and in Europe," or "What are (Africa) and (the five highest mountains in Europe)?"

    My friend demonstrated that the claims made by the manufacturer for the product were not valid (specifically, that it would correctly answer simple English questions).  That's all.

    Or does the story sound familiar because you are the friend in question, whom I haven't seen in twenty years?  In which case:  Hello!  Did you ever escape from that sweatshop?

     


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