Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!news.glorb.com!border1.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!border2.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!news.iecc.com!.POSTED!nerds-end From: "Gerry Rzeppa" Newsgroups: comp.compilers Subject: Re: A Plain English Compiler Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 21:22:58 -0500 Organization: Compilers Central Lines: 23 Sender: news@iecc.com Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com Message-ID: <14-11-001@comp.compilers> References: <06-02-122@comp.compilers> <06-02-125@comp.compilers> <14-10-005@comp.compilers> <14-10-008@comp.compilers> <14-10-009@comp.compilers> <14-10-012@comp.compilers>ge-ID: <14-10-020@comp.compilers> <14-10-022@comp.compilers> NNTP-Posting-Host: news.iecc.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: miucha.iecc.com 1414864573 57049 2001:470:1f07:1126:0:676f:7373:6970 (1 Nov 2014 17:56:13 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@iecc.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2014 17:56:13 +0000 (UTC) Keywords: practice Posted-Date: 01 Nov 2014 13:56:13 EDT X-submission-address: compilers@iecc.com X-moderator-address: compilers-request@iecc.com X-FAQ-and-archives: http://compilers.iecc.com Xref: csiph.com comp.compilers:1409 [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]