Hello World (free magazine)

[richmond62]

Apart from the fact that any time anyone says 'Hello World' I feel like vomiting: (the ultimate dumbing-down-puke-term up there with 'My Computer') this series of magazines (to which I have contributed 2 fairly crappy articles) DOES contain some interesting things, and, as long as you can cope with the PC-WOKE-Right-On-Lefty attitude of most of it, is worth going through:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/hello-world/issues

[OpenXTalkPaul]

Apart from the fact that any time anyone says 'Hello World' I feel like vomiting: (the ultimate dumbing-down-puke-term up there with 'My Computer') this series of magazines (to which I have contributed 2 fairly crappy articles) DOES contain some interesting things, and, as long as you can cope with the PC-WOKE-Right-On-Lefty attitude of most of it, is worth going through:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/hello-world/issues

Thanks for the link Richmond.
While that latest issue is mostly about 'AI', because of course everything is about AI now, there was an article on an interesting high-level programming language called Elan, you could skip the article and give it a try here:
https://elan-lang.org/beta/

[richmond62]

Personally all that does is make me more determined to keep on with OXT:
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Funnily enough it reminds me when 'Bonehead Barker' our very clever and inspiring Maths teacher told us that a new version of BASIC
had dropped the requirement to use LET (in 1975).

[richmond62]

Elan - short for 'Educational language' - is the first new programming language designed specifically for teaching in British schools since BBC Basic in 1981.

1. That says a lot about whoever makes decisions about "teaching in British schools">

1.1. I wonder what exactly "teaching in British schools" means when Scotland and England have different educational systems.

2. Why the fudge does this sidestep/avoid object-oriented offerings such as OXT, which havw=e a less steep learning curve?

3. "designed specifically for teaching in British schools": did anyone ask them for this?

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... prCViAeVKM

Watch and weep: and, in my case at least, at 62, wonder whether there have been ANY real advances in educational approahes to programming since 1975.

I must say those videos are incredibly boring and badly put together.

[richmond62]

(targeting KS3-KS5)

For those of you who are wondering, Key Stages 3 - 5 basically means:
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https://www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/medi ... stages.pdf

[richmond62]

Elan is multi-paradigm, supporting procedural, object-oriented

If the last claim of that be true one might expect an IDE that is significantly less crude than what is available at the moment.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

Elan is multi-paradigm, supporting procedural, object-oriented

If the last claim of that be true one might expect an IDE that is significantly less crude than what is available at the moment.

Well it is only a web IDE and a Beta at that.
I can't find a link for the source code for it. Is it FOSS?

But the language itself (sans a decent IDE) does do the OOP things, as seen in the object 'class' definition in that example code. To me it looks much like an OOP oriented dialect of BASIC. The function declaration is rather similar to xTBuilder's handler definitions.

[richmond62]

Re: Elan . . .

"Captain Snotbag" over there closed and deleted my questions re a GUI/IDE because, obviously, it does not suite the usual British Government's policy (c.f. its SLOW but much-vaunted government regulated 'Broadband') of fobbing the mediocre on its citizens.
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I replied to that person directly by email:

I am not entirely sure why you closed the thread.

I have taught programming to children aged 9 - 17 using an object-based language with a GUI for 20 years with great success. I have 31 years experience of working with Object-based languages both in education and in terms of software production.

Unfortunately what I saw of the state of Elan at the moment makes me thing that about 30 years of history
has been ignored.

And your condescending tone in your email to me would suggest that you might do some research into your interlocutors before you look down your patrician nose at them.

sincerely, Richmond Mathewson.

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[OpenXTalkPaul]

He's not wrong about an object oriented language being separate from a UI Toolkit. Although UI toolkit's 'widget' elements are often the objects that are the target or product of an oriented language, you can use OOP for 'objects' that have no need for any visual representation on-screen. It's a programming pattern.

[richmond62]

He's not wrong about an object oriented language being separate from a UI Toolkit. Although UI toolkit's 'widget' elements are often the objects that are the target or product of an oriented language, you can use OOP for 'objects' that have no need for any visual representation on-screen. It's a programming pattern.

No, of course he's not.

He does, however, have a problem with his 'tone'.