Re: on neophytes vs perfectionists (was Re: Tell Blocks Considered Harmful)
Re: on neophytes vs perfectionists (was Re: Tell Blocks Considered Harmful)
- Subject: Re: on neophytes vs perfectionists (was Re: Tell Blocks Considered Harmful)
- From: Shane Stanley <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:33:58 +1100
- Thread-topic: on neophytes vs perfectionists (was Re: Tell Blocks Considered Harmful)
On 18/12/08 9:14 PM, "Chris Page" <email@hidden> wrote:
> How difficult or easy do you find it is to teach to people who have
> never programmed before?
It's hard to quantify -- I have nothing to compare it to -- but certainly
much easier than someone who has programmed, as a rule. While programmers
hate the areas of ambiguity, quirks in a language are the norm for most
neophytes, at least English speakers.
> How much of that ease or difficulty is because of the syntax?
That certainly helps, especially the readability. I think one of the big
things about whose clauses for beginners is not writing them -- that can
still be baffling -- but the fact that they make code much harder to follow.
And readability is a big step to getting people to take existing code and
play with it.
But there's nothing like success to drive further learning, and the fact
that people can put together small scripts quickly, and do useful work with
them, as opposed to printing "Hello World", is a huge spur.
--
Shane Stanley <email@hidden>
AppleScript Pro Florida, April 2009 <http://scriptingmatters.com/aspro>
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