What is Digg?107 Comments
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5"it's VB.
no digg."
Because you know VB isn't used for anything at all. Nope, it's a completely useless programming language, I mean, there are soooo many python job listings on monster, dice, etc.......
/rolls eyes.......... - hammerattack, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This is actually a good idea, not so much for kids,but for everyone who wants to be able to quickly learn a programming language that lets them build really simple apps. I've learned more than a few programming languages myself, but they're all niche. Until recently, I couldn't build a windows gui apps with PHP. I couldn't build a web app with C. And I couldn't built anything with C on the QT framework, despite all the assurances that it was both easy, powerful, and compact. I downloaded KPL and I already have a basic physics package which models inelastic collisions. w00t!
- jstagner, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Greetings all. I am the inventor and lead developer of KPL, and I'd like to make an observation here:
Interesting that the original post says that KPL is by Microsoft. This is a little misleading, as Microsoft has been quite active (and effective) in evangelizing KPL, but KPL is not a Microsoft product, which is a common misperception . Kostik is right about it's ease of use, however
KPL is a freeware product created by Morrison Schwartz, and although it is certainly designed to be similar to VB and other flavors of BASIC, it is primarily focused on getting beginners interested in programming by making it as simple and fun as possible.
When CS enrollment in colleges is dropping at such a dramatic rate, and even "simple" languages like VB are geared towards the professional and not the beginner, KPL fits in quite nicely. This is well demonstrated by KPL's rapidly growing popularity and feedback by it's community.
Like most developers, I have a very hard time imagining what my life would be like if I had not gotten introduced to simple programming tools and languages at a young age, and I believe that it is vital to provide others with the same opportunity.
Thanks for the comments, everyone. Much appreciated. - digitalsin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This is a great learning tool for really anyone new to the whole idea of programming. WTF is this stuff about Python? Python is ugly, cryptic, and not conduscive to someone brand spanking new to programming. It's more conduscive to helping someone get frustrated as quickly as possible and possibly just give up thinking "I'm just not cut out for this".
I started with BASIC when I was 13 years old. I would have loved a tool like this. No language is "useless" (even Python) if it can teach someone the basics of programming and BUILD THEIR CONFIDENCE.
I'm a software developer and in my spare time I mentor inner city kids who otherwise might not be exposed to the computer science field. In the beginning, its ALL about building confidence and patience. I ***** hate these posters who think someone needs to start out with something like CC++, Python, etc. You really need to let your ego deflate just a bit, bud. - beejay54, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Anything that gets kids interested in the other side of computing (that being the creation side) is cool with me. I love projects like this. Kids like instant results, they don't care about VB, Java, Python etc, let them worry about that when they get older. We need more stuff like this for our kids, it promotes creative thinking and math skills.
- digitalsin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Keep up the great idea and work MS KPL
- DannoHung, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Someone arrest this man for child abuse!
- Kostik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1>What's so fantastic about this? It's just another high-level programming language..
Yes, it's very high-level.
>AMOS and Blitz Basic could do this stuff back in 1990.
with 3D and effects just that simple like here? - Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Number(myVar) ???
Don't you mean, myVar.toNumber() ? - akinder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@astrotrain: Believe it or not, kids aren't into the whole zealot OS holy war, only teenagers are.
- ezweave, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1No digg... I agree about learning a real language, but I guess I am "hardcore". Haha.
Seriously, though, this story has a misleading and WRONG title. THIS IS NOT A MICROSOFT PRODUCT. Please read up on things before you post stories: http://www.kidsprogramminglanguage.com/
At least give the creator credit for his work. The company is called Morrison Schwartz, Inc. - WermerSkoch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Holy crap, what's wrong with you people? These guys made this to TEACH their KIDS (and other people who are completely new to programming), how to program. Of course it's crazy easy, THEY DESIGNED IT THAT WAY. You guys might as well be saying "Pfft, teach a kid to read with the Cat in the Hat? That's too easy! Give them some Shakespeare!" Seriously, get off your high "when-I-was-your-age-I-walked-up-hill-both-ways-to-school-in-the-snow-with-barbed-wire-shoes" horse. This is some cool stuff, that will no doubt get lots of kids interested in programming.
- fbriggs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I learned to program in hypercard when i was 7-9. i kept being unimpressed by this video because they were talking about how it was so few lines to do this or that. hypercard did things with far fewer lines, and it tought me object oriented concepts right away. my first program in it played an animation when a button was clicked. to make it, i drew a bunch of separate cards. then i had a button with the script:
onClick
show 100 cards
endClick
or something like that (its been a while).
anyway, the point is hypercard roxors KPL. - digitalsin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"The only things you're going to learn from BASIC or any of its descendants are bad programming habits. There are far better ways to teach kids to code."
Uh...the LANGUAGE does not teach someone bad habits. Does the language let you get away with bad habits, yes. Guess what? I can write some pretty shawdy, poorly structured, dirty code in C++, Java, or C# any day of the week. - tuxidomasx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1when i was little i programmed in qbasic. and imma make my kids do the same. BASIC is a _real_ kids programming language.
- MalDON, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yea, anything to keep kids away from drugs.
- tylerni7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Yea, programming languages should count as foreign languages. And for everyone bashing KPL... if you don't like it, don't use it. It isn't for you it is for YOUR KIDS. It is supposed to be easy to use. Sure you could teach them VB or C(I learned C when I started programming) but it would be easier for them to start on something simple and then move up to more complex things later on.
- mindtrap, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0BASIC all the way. Nothing better than that.
Man, I miss the good old days. - stokestack, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"the good old days of qbasic and AOL"
Umm, there WERE no "good old days" involving AOL. CompuServe, maybe. - nargilamonster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0rather than being required to learn another human-human language in school; children should be taught a programming (human-machine) language. Seriously, when am I ever going to go to France? It's ***** France for crying out loud!
I may however, find it necessary to rewrite programs, such as worflows, to mechanize tedious tasks at my tedious job. - digitalsin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"I figure true understanding half the time and excitement almost every time is more than enough"
Good call. That's what's good about KPL I believe. Get kids excited about programming and build their confidence. - p1nhead, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I clicked the link thinking Visual Basic.
- Dave, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I can think of another kids programming language. Anybody here done any WoW scripting? I've hardly touched it, but my little brother is fluent. Last night, I was showing him a little PHP by working on a Sudoku solver together. He kept saying, "oh. that's just like wow scripting." God bless games for teaching stuff.
- rafgar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0BASIC really DOES teach bad programming habits. The language itself encourages them in this case. Hence, it's a lousy language to start coding with. Besides which, the hard part of learning to program is learning to program, not learning the language you use to do it.
And for the record, yes, I have taught kids to code. I firmly believe that teaching a kid to code young (like in 1st or 2nd grade) is one of the best things you can do for them, but if you're gonna teach them to code, do it in a language that encourages good habits, like Python or even Java. - memerot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0You're going to teach your 3 year old to program? Going for the youngest MCP in the world, huh?
- rlorenzo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1What about Squeak (http://www.squeak.org/)? I actually used it and seen it in action and it is a very visual programming lannguage
- bennokr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Game Maker ( http://www.gamemaker.nl/ ) is a game making program that has GML, the Game Maker Language. It's more powerful, and even easier for beginners.
- memerot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0You're correct digitalsin. I really shouldn't post here anymore when I'm drunk (I lied earlier).
- magik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This has nothing to do with Microsoft other than it was developed in C#. This title of this article is very misleading and the poster doesn't know what he's talking about. Microsoft IS NOT developing or supporting this in any way, stop thinking it's from Microsoft, that's ridiculous.
Reported: Inaccurate.
Besides, this programming language is still far too high-level for beginners to use. A very good beginner programming languge is MicroWorlds Pro - fzammetti, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0My 6-year old son started learning how to program last year... I started him off with Java. Oh, I didn't just open up Eclipse and let bim have at it of course... what I did is I wrote a little program for him, and put a batch file on his desktop. He could click it, the program would compile and execute. So, each morning, since he gets up before me and plays by himself for a ltitle while, I left him a little worksheet, things like "ok, change line X to Y and see what it does... ok, now change line A to B and see what it does... ok, now make the program to Z"... the first two exercises gave him the concept, then he had to do it himself. Guess what? 9 times out of 10 he woke me up all excited saying "Wow!! I made SpongeBob appear on the screen!!" or "Cool!! My name was flying all around!!"... that would be enough because he's excited about what he's doing, but then I'd go to the computer with him and make him tell me why what he changed did what it did, and probably half the time he could explain it... sometimes he just realixed the pattern and made it work without really knowing what he was doing, but at 6 years old, I figure true understanding half the time and excitement almost every time is more than enough.
- energeek, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Kids shouldn't start by writing games. Kids are excited by anything challenging. So the beginning programs should be challenging and explain the concepts. Thats the most important thing, they should know their concepts well. Game development is something that anyone should begin only after they have about an year of experience. First they should get used to OOP or Structured programming, get to know a language's capabilities and its API library atleast quite a bit, find solutions to algorithms starting from fibonacci to more advanced once, they should be able to program efficiently, not having a lot of variables holding unneccessary values. They should write non-game real world programs first.
- detroitsux, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Programmers belong in third world countries anyway. So all that elitist MS-bashing and my-language-is-better ***** talking isn't going to matter.
I agree that programming should be taught to kids for learning purposes. But that's pretty much it. If they want to take it further, they can find a country that pay lower wages, eat sand, and program to their heart's content. - kinobe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0After reading the comments I can't help but think that most of you are pimply teenage nerds whose only excitement in life is to bash MS and think about how leet you are with your 'mad programming skillz'. If your only consolation to that is that you aren't a teenager, you're still behaving like one and need to stab yourself in the face. Get a ***** life.
That said.
@nlogax : LOL
I think this is an excellent initiative to expose more children to programming. I can imagine kids who aren't really into computers/IT/programming wouldn't even consider exploring the field. Not that programming is THE definitive field for everyone, but education of any sort is always good.
What's the age group tho? I doubt most 7-10 year olds would be able to grasp all that. When I read the title I actually expected drag and drop stuff (tho that wouldn't be very useful knowledge at all). - GliTCH82, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0All of you sound like my grandparents. I say quit looking back damnit, just because you used to write assembler at 6 doesn't make you a genius, someone had to create the chip that you are so comfortably coding for at home with your A/Cs and television sets. Sure all lower level languages enable you to code high performance programs. Programs that take a lot of skill to develop, but it takes a lot of skill to create a processor in the first place. High level languages might make it easier to code but they definitely open up the possibilities for applications of higher complexity. Applications that, in a wider sense, are more complex in nature than the foundations they are built on, and so it goes. Sure you could write an OS like Linux in assembly but which company out there has the time or the patience to do that? Would it really be worth it?
- kungPow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Here are some problems:
-It is essentially a rip-off of Visual Basic. In fact it is almost identical. They just removed a lot of stuff.
-The IDE is of course Windows only. It is basically just using the .NET api to access the form designer used by Visual Studio.
-The source code is not only NOT available, but they have been suggesting they might someday start charging for this kid's programming language.
I would recommend either using the normal Visual Basic if that is your thing, or else for kids see for example netlogo. It can do 3d and animations and simulations and games as well.
I would definitely NOT recomment for kids things like java, C++, python, etc. Unless you want to kill their interest in programming for the next 10 years. None of those are designed with beginners in mind (well, python is based on a beginner's language-abc, but everything they've done since then has hurt beginner friendliness). - memerot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Really? There's already a 9 year old MCP:
http://www.geo.tv/main_files/pakistan.aspx?id=72388 - zenquest, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0People interested in this should also look at Alice. (http://www.alice.org/) It's a similar kids programming tool, but it's built on Java. Kids who learn on Alice can easily move up to learning Java. (all the terminology is the same, and the language structure is basically Java)
- jstagner, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Um, there is no form designer in KPL, and in fact there is no support for forms at all. Removing a lot of the "stuff" from VB is one of the primary things that makes it accessible to beginners ;)
As much as we'd like to second-guess what's good and effective for kids (or other beginners), the fact is that the feedback we've received from educators and actual users has been encouraging and largely positive. The primary purpose of KPL is to have fun, at which it succeeds quite nicely. - tfinniga, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Reading these comments, I can't wait for the improved comments system. That's one area where slashdot still kills digg.
Although to be honest, it's not that much of a surprise that there was a lot of controversy/trolling. I mean, look at all the holy wars it touches:
- Article says it was my Microsoft (although turns out that's not the case)
- Only runs on windows
- Is a programming language
- Has an IDE (thank goodness it's not based on emacs or vi)
I personally think it can't be a bad thing. In my experience, getting kids making stuff and having fun is what's important. If the kids like making things, when they run up against the limits of what they're using, they'll learn more. As they get more sophisticated, they'll learn good programming practices. Really, we don't need kids to be software engineers, just interested and having fun. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I remember when I was little. Programming in Basic with my dad. I made some rightous programs and games.
Now it's C++ and Assembly for me. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I hope it includes a kids spell checker
- wilfordbrimley, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0damn that video work is sexy
- 8ight, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0i teach computer class at a grade school. i'm going to look closer at this. 5th graders are the oldest students i see, this might be over a lot of their heads. basic sends their heads a smokin'... this might be mental meltdown fire hazards if i try to teach this. very cool. i'm going to work w/ it.
- GrinningFool, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Haha!
"How do I start?
You can start learning KPL today – it is available for free! – if you have a computer running Microsoft Windows. Please ask your parent or teacher for permission, and for help with downloading and installing KPL." - Firethorne, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0KPL is a product of Morrison Schwartz, Inc., a software development and consulting company. - http://www.kidsprogramminglanguage.com/contact.htm
This is not a Microsoft product. - sbostedor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Damn, I was hoping that the article was going to announce a programming language to program the KIDS. How dissapointing.
Didn't Microsoft already make a programming for kids called VB.NET? ;P - furtwan1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0this is NOT vb.
Whoever started that rumor obviously didn't watch the video.
This language is built using C# and is a very simple scripting language with some vb like syntax.
Get the facts strait before you start spamming the comments. - memerot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Sure you could write an OS like Linux in assembly but which company out there has the time or the patience to do that?"
Please google this term "embedded system linux" or "real time os". Sometimes you need unbelievable uptime and unbelievable responsiveness, like when you're controlling the rods in a nuclear plant. Funny sidenote, read the license terms for Java, they specify that it not be used to control a pacemaker or nuclear plant (I'm not kidding). - digitalsin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Funny sidenote, read the license terms for Java, they specify that it not be used to control a pacemaker or nuclear plant "
Oh ***** - OriginalGamer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Um... maybe kids don't need to be learning programing, maybe they should just be focused on... being kids? Just a suggestion...
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