[Systems] [haakon.eriksen at far.no: Fram - a suggestion for bringing kids to Sugar-programming]

[Aleksey Lim]

Hi all,

This is an option that can make wiki.sugarlabs.org more useful, e.g.,
having powerful tutorials on wiki.sl.o when people can launch activities
right from the wiki.

I think we can try it on wiki-devel.sl.o...

FGrose: any ideas? Are you taking care about -devel instance on
sunjammer? If not, I can help Haakon with setting up FRAM there.


----- Forwarded message from Haakon <haakon.eriksen at far.no> -----

From: Haakon <haakon.eriksen at far.no>
Subject: Fram - a suggestion for bringing kids to Sugar-programming
To: Alsroot <alsroot at member.fsf.org>
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2010 05:02:00 -0500 (EST)

Hi, Aleksey!

Have you heard about literal programming? It was a concept introduced by the famous Donald E. Knuth. The idea is to write about your intensions, then intersperse your explanation with marked code, continue explaning what you want to do, add some more code and continue explaining this way until you are done. The marked code is then extracted for use by an interpreter or for compiliation by the computer. In short, programming is considered an act of writing for others.

A friend of mine, Philippe Teuwen, and I have a small project called "Fram", which bacically does literal programming in a wiki. See http://far.no/fram/index.php?title=User:Haakon for the pre-history of Fram or my "Introduction to Haskell" to see what Fram is about - http://far.no/fram/index.php?title=Introduction_to_Haskell

I was writing to another friend, when it hit me - this is a useful concept to introduce into the Sugar environment, because we want to empower Free Software users and get children into programming. What if every activity was available as an article written in a literal programming way, then the child could see what was intended and how this was implemented into code. If they have any questions, they can use the Discussion page.

My e-mail address is haakon.eriksen at far.no if you have any questions.

Yours sincerely,
Haakon Meland Eriksen, Drammen, Norway

-- 
This e-mail was sent by Haakon to Alsroot by the "E-mail user" function at Sugar Labs.


----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
Aleksey