Re: A Plain English Compiler

From	"Gerry Rzeppa" <gerry.rzeppa@pobox.com>
Newsgroups	comp.compilers
Subject	Re: A Plain English Compiler
Date	2014-10-31 21:22 -0500
Organization	Compilers Central
Message-ID	<14-11-001@comp.compilers> (permalink)
References	(2 earlier) <14-10-005@comp.compilers> <14-10-008@comp.compilers> <14-10-009@comp.compilers> <14-10-020@comp.compilers> <14-10-022@comp.compilers>

Show all headers | View raw

[I'm reminded of Logo, which was a big hit around 1970 teaching kids to
program, then disappeared... -John]

Yes, I thought of LOGO myself as I replied to your previous post. But I'm
not sure LOGO is as dead as you might think: many groups are still active
with the thing, from the "Turtle Academy" (http://turtleacademy.com/) to MIT
(http://el.media.mit.edu/logo-foundation/index.html). Google for others.

I think the main problem with Logo is that, like other artificial languages,
it confounds the essential concepts of programming (sequence, conditionals,
loops, types, variables, parameters, etc) with the syntax used to represent
them. And worse -- due to its LISP heritage -- it often encourages the
student to implement certain things in less-than-intuitive ways (making
lists of things that are not naturally lists; using recursion where a simple
loop is the obvious answer, etc). Plain English avoids both of these
shortcomings.
[We're back to arguing about what's intuitive.  Having taught a
certain number of undergraduates, I can report that neither loops nor
recursion are obvious and some people have enormous trouble imagining
a variable with contents that are updated, which is the key concept to
make loops work. Anyway, under the semicolon rule, we're done with
this thread. -John]

Thread

Re: A Plain English Compiler gerry.rzeppa@pobox.com - 2014-10-24 16:33 -0700
  Re: A Plain English Compiler lesliedellow@gmail.com - 2014-10-25 06:01 -0700
    Re: A Plain English Compiler "Derek M. Jones" <derek@knosof.co.uk> - 2014-10-25 19:51 +0100
    Re: A Plain English Compiler "Gerry Rzeppa" <gerry.rzeppa@pobox.com> - 2014-10-30 14:53 -0500
  Re: A Plain English Compiler Martin Ward <martin@gkc.org.uk> - 2014-10-27 11:54 +0000
    Re: A Plain English Compiler Kartik Agaram <ak@akkartik.com> - 2014-10-27 12:25 -0700
      Re: A Plain English Compiler Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2014-10-27 21:45 +0000
        Re: reading and writing, was A Plain English Compiler Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2014-10-28 17:37 -0400
        Re: A Plain English Compiler Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@netscape.net> - 2014-10-29 01:28 +0100
          Fw: A Plain English Compiler "Gerry Rzeppa" <gerry.rzeppa@pobox.com> - 2014-10-30 04:02 -0500
        Re: A Plain English Compiler mac <acolvin@efunct.com> - 2014-11-03 13:15 +0000
      Re: A Plain English Compiler Ivan Godard <ivan@ootbcomp.com> - 2014-10-27 15:07 -0700
      Re: A Plain English Compiler Martin Ward <martin@gkc.org.uk> - 2014-10-28 15:14 +0000
        Re: A Plain English Compiler Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2014-10-28 17:33 -0400
        Re: A Plain English Compiler "Gerry Rzeppa" <gerry.rzeppa@pobox.com> - 2014-10-30 17:05 -0500
          Re: A Plain English Compiler "Gerry Rzeppa" <gerry.rzeppa@pobox.com> - 2014-10-31 01:05 -0500
            Re: A Plain English Compiler "Gerry Rzeppa" <gerry.rzeppa@pobox.com> - 2014-10-31 21:22 -0500
      Fw: A Plain English Compiler "Gerry Rzeppa" <gerry.rzeppa@pobox.com> - 2014-10-30 04:01 -0500

csiph-web