[Yr7-10it] Re : .. Programming for all levels

[Costello, Rob R]

> Anyway
> How did you all learn programming?

For the record, my answer to that question I asked is as follows (and my
motivation behind this is also below) 

Programming mainly a side hobby  - tackled in bouts when I had the idea
to do something new

1980, year 7, my dad brought home a Vic-20 - with 3.7 k of RAM - took 20
minutes to load a game from tape. 

The manual I had with that little machine was really clear - I'd like to
find it again  

I reckon this was maybe the generation of kids that had it easiest for
learning programming - never had to wrestle with punch cards or Fortran,
could debug instantly  - and yet languages were really aimed at
beginners (BASIC), not professionals   

Quite a few of my peers learnt the same way  - just played with the
things - maybe school offered a class or two

Maybe it made for slack programming, but it sure got you started - good
foundational skills, from that 3.7 k machine, for later programming

Only a little word processing at uni 

Learnt spreadsheets (Lotus) and macros on vacation jobs. 
Worked in high-tech labs / R&D for a while. 
Learnt the Excel 4 macro language (pre VBA) in order to streamline
laboratory information needs.

Learnt VBA as it took over as the macro language. 

Made various tools by programming Excel, in schools etc (daily org
package etc)  eg VELS audit tool :
http://www.thinkingcurriculum.com/vtindex.asp

Learnt ASP / Vbscript / (& CSS) for curiosity - and then for data driven
web sites. 

Learnt Actionscript (AS2) to develop a concept mapping idea. Side effect
was I finally understood VB properly. 

Learning Java since pondering AS2 had opened the OOP door more fully. 

Not sure where I was going with this question in the first place  

Where did the VELS ICT people learn programming? 
(syntax error : missing reference to __technical__skill__set in line 205
? ) 

My take on some of this : 
http://tinyurl.com/yrxtr2

tossing it all around to try to crystallise a masters research thesis 

(supervisor today said - unaware of all this discussion  - 

(Your problem is you have about 4 PhD's in here and I know from
experience you do have a tendency - more than one in fact - to move into
different areas ...  I'm most grabbed by your idea that CS should be a
Discipline in its own right - I've always held that - but I don't think
that's a Masters - it could be but i think it would be hard in the sense
that it really needs a book along Mindstorms lines)

Interesting comment on status of CS as a discipline hey? 

Anyway reading some of places where you guys hang out (the various blogs
and wikis where your names turn up ) - I feel a bit like I've found a
combination of ICT and philosophical thinking that seems, in any given
school, to be a minority (the "lets just use the stuff" approach / use
some app with low entry and high graphics or communication payoff -
seems to dominate. That whole tension is one I'd like to investigate -
I'm not unsympathetic to that approach for lots of kids - gamemaker is a
good hybrid between the two (purist vs ICT user)  

anyway.. internet can be good for amplifying that sense that something
is misunderstood, is worth discussing ...

Cheers 

Rob 


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