On 6/27/05, Arthur <ajsiegel@optonline.net> wrote:
Kirby writes -
You've taken aim at bloated, graphics-intensive environments (like Alice) that insulate students from learning any real programming, giving them instead some dumbed down command set and a lot of gee whiz razzle-dazzle. No real maturity develops.
Yes and no, in terms of what motivates my hysterias.
My objection to projects like Alice is nothing more specific, really, than my subjective sense of where it is coming from, what motivates it, and its level of sincerity and integrity.
It is difficult both to defend such subjective assessments, and to back away from them.
When the stakes are as I imagine them to be - that is. There are plenty of areas in which I am willing to be kind. Or at least silent. This area - education, technology, and children - ain't one of them.
I have second thoughts about Alice too (and not just because Pausch apparently rewrote it in Java :-). See for yourself about Pausch's IMO cocky, self-serving attitude: http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/interviews/v6i20_pausch.html -- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)