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

[mokurai at earthtreasury.org]

On Fri, June 24, 2011 2:10 pm, Aleksey Lim wrote:
> 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.

That would be excellent.

> ----- 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?

Literate programming

> It was a concept introduced by
> the famous Donald E. Knuth. The idea is to write about your intentions,
> then intersperse your explanation with marked code, continue explaining
> 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 compilation by the computer. In short, programming is
> considered an act of writing for others.

There are two programs involved.

Weave creates a nicely formatted, publishable version in TeX, where code
segments and their commentary appear together, with cross-references to
the context of the code. These segments can thus appear in a sequence that
develops logically for humans.

Tangle removes the commentary and puts the code fragments into the
indicated order as source code, ready for compilation or interpretation.
Knuth also created a TeX style for literate programming with the
appropriate markup entities and macros.

APL originated as Iverson Notation, a language for people to use when
talking about computers and algorithms, and was not implemented for
several years. Of course, most people are not willing to learn that much
math. There is, however, an APL version of Literate Programming.

> 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
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>


-- 
Edward Mokurai
(默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر
ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks