[erlang-questions] Erlang for youngsters

Mon Jun 16 19:58:35 CEST 2014

I remember using Rur-ple http://rur-ple.sourceforge.net/ to get my
daughter interested in programming. She seemed to find it fairly
entertaining and I was quite impressed at how quickly she progressed.

Something similar for Erlang may work quite well.

Leonard
--

On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 1:30 PM, Ferenc Holzhauser
<ferenc.holzhauser@REDACTED> wrote:
> Robotics is really nice but in this case accessibility is even nicer. It is
> great if kids can play after class too with interesting things without
> having to put items of fairly significant value (for some) on their
> <whatever present giving thing comes up next> wishlist. These days a
> computer with internet access can be a fascinatingly accessible way of
> creativity. An idea could be to make a simple game backend to compete with
> their friends and fellow students (e.g. a 2d tank shooting game or
> something). Eventually with chat and similar functions to add. Then the
> teacher could make things go wrong on the server(s) that they'd need to fix
> (distribute/scale/fail over) depending on their progress. You could lure
> them into AI like things too if you fancy. I'm sure someone with the skills
> (e.g. SVG/ezwebframe) and time could make some simple client "building
> blocks" work for something like this.
>
>
> On 16 June 2014 18:12, Tony Rogvall <tony@REDACTED> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 16 jun 2014, at 13:55, Mark Nijhof <mark.nijhof@REDACTED>
>> wrote:
>>
>> +1 on this, this rings very true to home. But I also believe that it needs
>> to return results quickly. I.e. building a game is great, but if they have
>> to "code" for days before they see something happen then they loose interest
>> (assumption). So preparing "building blocks" might be a good approach and
>> have them first implement higher level stuff and then step by step dig
>> deeper and implement the building blocks you prepared.
>>
>> An other exercise I planned is to program a drone (not sure about the
>> language there yet) to fly an obstacle course. So they see it is not just
>> something that happens on their iPads ;)
>>
>> You program drone in Erlang of course :-)
>>
>> https://github.com/tonyrog/edrone
>>
>> /Tony
>>
>> -Mark
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 1:36 PM, Mahesh Paolini-Subramanya
>> <mahesh@REDACTED> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> The most important thing here I believe is to have a nice collection of
>>>> simple tasks/problems that are appealing to the target audience and best
>>>> (easiest/nicest) solved in Erlang.
>>>
>>> Amen!
>>> The least relevant part of teaching kids programming is the syntax, or
>>> the choice of language - they don't, and won't, give a s**t about it.
>>> As a simple thought experiment, just look at how you raised your kids in
>>> a multi-lingual environment (yes my American brethren, this is hard. Pretend
>>> :-)  )  Notice how they - fluidly - bounce across languages, massacring
>>> every grammar rule ever, but quite happily making sure that you understand
>>> that "I amn't going to eat pea, ನಾನು ತಿನ್ನಲ್ಲ, ನಾನು ತಿನ್ನಲ್ಲ, odio odio odio
>>> la piselli, i don't wanna, where is my red truck?"
>>> Mind you, they will pick up the rules over time, but the key here is the
>>> importance of the problem at hand ("How To Avoid Eating Peas") - the more
>>> immediately relevant it is to the young 'uns, the more rapidly they will
>>> pick up the tools, the specifics of the language be damned.
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 6:55 AM, Ferenc Holzhauser
>>> <ferenc.holzhauser@REDACTED> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> The most important thing here I believe is to have a nice collection of
>>>> simple tasks/problems that are appealing to the target audience and best
>>>> (easiest/nicest) solved in Erlang. That's a bit of a challenge considering
>>>> that Erlang is created to solve problems that are rather "industrial" and
>>>> most people "from outside" can't really relate to. If the audience is not
>>>> comfortable with understanding the problem itself then it is tricky to make
>>>> them understand/like the solution too.
>>>>
>>>> This we can see with many new people getting into Erlang: The problems
>>>> they are given are new and difficult to understand. So they often just go
>>>> off and eagerly try to solve all sort of issues they are familiar with (even
>>>> when they are not relevant in the particular case) before even trying to
>>>> understand what the real challenge is. Then they start complaining that
>>>> Erlang is not very good for some/many of those issues they are busy with.
>>>>
>>>> And other way around: people coming to Erlang with the right
>>>> understanding of the problem area it is made for find it amazingly simple to
>>>> learn.
>>>>
>>>> Coming from the wrong (or right ?) background my imagination fails to
>>>> come up with these appealing challenges for the youngster target group, but
>>>> I'm sure many of you can do much better.
>>>>
>>>> Ferenc
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 16 June 2014 11:31, Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@REDACTED>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Garrett Smith wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 9:51 AM, Torben Hoffmann
>>>>>> <torben.hoffmann@REDACTED> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -snip-
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I think that a learning resource focused on teaching people the
>>>>>>> Erlang model from the
>>>>>>> ground up would be a great improvement. A clear narrative around how
>>>>>>> do we solve a
>>>>>>> problem the Erlang way. Teaching the basic constructs is not the
>>>>>>> problem.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> My initial target for such a learning resources would be young people
>>>>>>> in the higher
>>>>>>> grades of elementary school, say 12-15 years. Why? Because I want to
>>>>>>> influence them
>>>>>>> before their minds are totally corrupted by other programming models.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I don't think we would have to dumb anything down in particular for
>>>>>>> this group - we
>>>>>>> just have to find a cool example and organise the learning around how
>>>>>>> to become so
>>>>>>> good that one can solve such a problem.
>>>>>>> Some sort of game will probably be the best candidate, say, some sort
>>>>>>> of Transport
>>>>>>> Tycoon clone?!?!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I don't have enough experience teaching programming to this age group
>>>>>> to provide anything more than a hunch. But I suspect that the Erlang
>>>>>> way, which is hard enough for very seasoned programmers to grok, might
>>>>>> be a bit ambitious for these young learners.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm speaking in particular about the model that emerges when you
>>>>>> isolate processes. It changes everything: your approach to building
>>>>>> software (move from state oriented to activity oriented), error
>>>>>> handling (move from defensive measures to assertive/let-it-crash),
>>>>>> program structure (from monolith to system), and so on. The benefits
>>>>>> of this shift are hard to get across, in my experience anyway. I wish
>>>>>> it wasn't, or I wish I was better at communicating.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm with the folks who suggest that this group has fewer
>>>>> pre-conceptions to unlearn.
>>>>>
>>>>> It strikes me that the actor model is far more natural for certain
>>>>> classes of problems - network code, simulation, and gaming come to mind.
>>>>> It's simply conceptually easier to think in terms of LOTS of independent
>>>>> processes.
>>>>>
>>>>> Miles Fidelman
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
>>>>> In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra
>>>>>
>>>>>
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>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Mahesh Paolini-Subramanya
>>> That tall bald Indian guy..
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Mark Nijhof
>> t:   @MarkNijhof
>> s:  marknijhof
>>
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