[Fsf Education] Programming Languages

[Khuzaima A. Lakdawala]

Raju:

> The learning curve of Emacs is too high IMO.  Nor does it have a sleek
> interface.  If you want to rope kids into computers, make them excited
> first.  The majority of people I've seen excited by Emacs are
> hard-core computer professionals.

Being neither a child psychologist nor an educator, I of course don't
know for sure what would "excite" kids. But what's a "sleek interface"
anyway -- it's relative, there isn't an absolute scale of sleekness
when it comes to computer user interfaces. Besides, shouldn't
education concentrate on substance rather than form? The interface,
sleek or otherwise, should be secondary to the substance, or meat, of
Emacs.

As for the steepness of the learning curve: Most people who find Emacs
difficult have already been exposed to other computing paradigms --
Emacs is not their first exposure to computers. Therefore their
perception of Emacs is influenced by earlier experience. This will not
be the case with the kids (other than the less than 1% of kids who
have a Start menu at home :) who haven't used any software before. So
we really can't say for sure whether it will be easy or difficult to
learn without actually trying it on kids in a pilot project.

> 
>     KLAK> If we want some children to learn programming, let the
>     KLAK> interested children discover programming inside Emacs
>     KLAK> without us having to teach them!. Consider the following
>     KLAK> extract from the Emacs manual:
> 
> Doesn't this contradict your `not teach a specific programming
> language' point earlier?

No, because the language won't be the subject and there will be no
conscious effort to teach it to ALL the students. When the students
find out that Emacs can be modified and extended, a small minority of
them (the tinkerers with an aptitude for programming) will go ahead
and try it. 

> IAC, why teach a language that hardly anyone uses?  Let them learn a
> language that will of at least some potential use to them in the
> future.

This is really not a good point. Different people will potentially use
different languages for different tasks. Ramakrishnan has already
articulated this in detail. It is really futile to pick and choose the
ONE language which will be of potential use to all the students.

And please note that Emacs Lisp is no longer the only extension
language for Emacs:

  http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?CategoryExtensionLanguage

Regards,
-- 
Khuzaima