Just Let Basic Die

http://coffeeghost.net/2009/12/22/just-let-basic-die/

by edw519 • 17 years ago

18 18 17 years ago

I'm glad to read such a positive outlook on Python as a beginner language, as I just sent my eight-year-old niece (and her parents) a book on it. If this gamble pays off she might just succeed in learning Python before I do. ;)

AlSweigart3• 17 years ago

Author here. I also wrote a free book on Python programming for beginners called Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python, and you can download it from http://inventwithpython.com if you're interested.

imurray• 17 years ago

For me the best bit on that page was in the comments:

“I’d be very careful not to underestimate kids. If you don’t tell them something is supposed to be hard, they will astound you.”

Yes! The first step to achieving something, is believing it is possible. Seeing good motivational examples can help with that, so I agree: suggest widely-used languages to kids.

ajross2• 17 years ago

But there are limits. Kids aren't going to understand decorators or list comprehensions. They aren't going to get the point of doc strings. They don't want to deal with packages and namespace issues in every piece of code they write.

None of this stuff existed in BASIC. As a kid in the 80's, I could read code in magazines written by professionals (of sorts) and understand every line. There's nothing like that in the modern world.

stevejohnson• 17 years ago

Kids aren't going to understand decorators or list comprehensions. They aren't going to get the point of doc strings.

Define "kid." I know middle schoolers who could get this stuff. I reject the idea that loops and functions are "easy" and other various language features and concepts are "hard."

There are some things which are going to be out of reach, but it's not going to be the same for everyone, and what those things actually are might surprise you.

And seriously, how are list comprehensions difficult to understand?

AlSweigart3• 17 years ago

You can be blissfully ignorant about the advanced features of Python and still program small games, just as you don't need to know everything about BASIC's syntax in order to code in BASIC.

The problem is that most books about Python are aimed at adults, when you can just as easily make them for kids. (Which is what I did, and released it for free under a Creative Commons license at http://inventwithpython.com )

osswid• 17 years ago

One of the nice things about Basic was that you didn't need to know how to use a text editor to program in it. Line numbers and the LIST command got you started. vi and emacs are a bit much for the wee ones. You can use a simple text editor, but there's still the concept of files, saving, extensions, vs. the integrated environment that a microcomputer Basic provided.

10 print "Hello, World."

RUN

Doesn't get simpler than that.

cubicle67• 17 years ago

ah yes it does...

  10 ? "Hello, World"

(yes, I know that's not what you were talking about)

rbanffy• 17 years ago

IIRC (actually I could fire up one and check, but I'm too lazy for that) if you had an Atari 8-bit computer, you could go:

10 PR. "Hello, World"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rbanffy/4208561088/

The simpler FX-series CASIO BASIC pocket computers used "PRT" for that. Cool gadgets.

scottdw2• 17 years ago

I can only speak from my own experience, so I don't know if this holds for everybody, but I think the guy misses a lot of important points.

When I was 13 I discovered programming, using QBASIC, on my old 286. This was in 1993, before the Y2K and .COM hoopla, and before anyone I knew had access to the internet, or even knew what the internet was.

Back then, if you went to the library by my house, they had about 2 books on programing, from 1982, that had nothing more exciting in them than "this is how your draw a maze in BASIC on your Apple II". Every now and then you might be able to find an old issue of Compute, with some code samples in it. For the most part, however, there was a pretty large dearth of information about programming accessible to a 13 year old kid who didn't know any one who knew anything about programming.

The thing I did have, however, was a copy of nibbles.bas and access to the QBASIC help screens. The language was small enough that one kid could read through every item in the index, and figure out what the meant. There were a few things, like BLOAD and BSAVE that I couldn't understand because I didn't know what pointers were or how they connected to arrays. Other than that I was able to figure everything out by just reading through the help screens.

This, I believe, is what made BASIC suitable for use by kids. It wasn't complicated. There wasn't a vast class library. The ability to produce sound was limited to the PC speaker, and there certainly wasn't any 3D graphics. There wasn't a windowing system, or any kind of scheduler.

BASIC certainly didn't have huge libraries to import.

Everything was super simple.

That made it approachable. It was something a kid could explore by him self, understand, and appreciate.

When you are exploring computer programing, writing apps that play pong or let stick figures shoot at each other with laser guns, all the rules on the right way of doing things just get in the way. They keep you from having fun. All you really need is a few variables, SCREEN, CIRCLE, LINE, BEEP, COLOR, and GOTO.

You definitely don't need classes, fields, closures, while loops, or even proper indentation. That stuff doesn't add to your DISCOVERY of computing. Yes it makes you a better programmer, but with kids that shouldn't be the goal.

The goal should be to HOOK them on programming. Rules just get in the way. Python has way too many of them. A lot more than BASIC.

Python has to be taught. You have to teach people: use control structures, indent your code, model things with objects, import these things. That makes it great for, say, college freshman, or AP students. It's not really suited for kids though.

BASIC can be explored. Easily. You can hold the entirety of BASIC in your head, at once. Everything. You can't do that with python, or even lisp (because of all the libraries).

So I say, give kids basic, and let them roam free for a while.

Let them make laser games out of spaghetti.

I think sometimes its easy to forget how much fun it was to write crappy spaghetti code that did small amusing things. Think back to when you were a kid, before you were old enough to know better. That's probably what got you hooked. Its what got me hooked.

That means BASIC, or something like it. You have to let people be creative, and messy, long before you start throwing rules at them. You can teach kids structure, and recursion, and pointers, and all that stuff later.

qw• 17 years ago

There were better BASIC languages out there at the time.

One example of this is AMOS. It was one of the very few pieces of software that I bought for the Amiga, because of the great manual. It was years ahead of qbasic/quickbasic and had a great library for moving graphics around.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMOS_(programming_language)

mechanical_fish3• 17 years ago

I discovered programming ... before anyone I knew had access to the internet, or even knew what the internet was.

Let me be blunt: Our kids are smarter than we are. Or than we were, anyway. They're growing up with Google.

The reason BASIC had to be so simple is that Stack Overflow didn't exist. You had to be able to grasp the language on your own, with minimal help, because at best help was miles away, or on the other end of a one-to-one telephone connection, or -- at the very best -- on a one- or two- or maybe even eight line BBS connection.

Now I venture to say that by reading the walkthroughs on Slicehost a ten-year-old could get an entire LAMP stack configured and start serving web pages with far less intellectual effort than I spent in writing a "guess this number between 1 and 100" program on the Commodore PET. There are individual videogames that are harder than BASIC was, to say nothing of the collectible card games or the RPGs.

The network is a big deal. It changes everything. In another generation it will take intense intellectual and creative effort to imagine just how geeks lived when I was ten, just as I'm still not sure I grasp how (e.g.) the atomic bomb was invented without the benefit of any electronic computer whatsoever, even a pocket calculator. (I have, at best, an abstract and intellectual grasp of what slide rules were about. I don't know how to use one.)

AlSweigart3• 17 years ago

Hi. I wrote that blog article. I think you may be missing the point. It's not that BASIC is bad at being a learning language. It's great for that. I learned programming with BASIC myself in that same timeframe.

But today we have languages that are superior and don't have the hang ups that BASIC has. I don't see why we should be devoting resources towards new (and mutually incompatible) implementations of BASIC. Python is easy to learn and can scale to any level of sophistication (but it doesn't require you to know the advanced stuff to write little games, like Java requires you to learn OOP).

alextgordon2• 17 years ago

There is already an ideal language to teach kids, and it exists right now.

PHP.

Whether or not you think it's a good language for building real world applications, it does have a lot of going for it when considered as a teaching language.

* It's weakly typed, dynamically typed and lacks variable declarations.

* It doesn't require learning OOP concepts before you can use it.

* The internet is full of free tutorials, documentation and knowledgeable people.

* There is only one variant. It's in active development.

* It's not so far removed from today's widely used languages. PHP -> Python is going to be easier than BASIC -> Python.

* It can be used to build real things. Despite what we'd like to think, command line interfaces are hardly ever used by the general population. Kids use websites on a regular basis. This is what will get them excited about programming.

plinkplonk• 17 years ago

"Whether or not you think it's a good language for building real world applications, it does have a lot of going for it when considered as a teaching language."

You must really hate kids?

alextgordon2• 17 years ago

The reasons why many hackers (including myself) dislike PHP are totally irrelevant to its merits as a teaching language.

I don't like the type system, I don't like how OOP is seemingly an afterthought, I don't like the mishmash of syntax or the irregularities in function naming. These are fine reasons for a programmer to eschew it, but I can't see how they would be a hindrance to anyone learning the concepts of programming.

Just Let Basic Die

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