[Edu-sig] Computer Programming for EVERYONE...

[Dustin James Mitchell]

On Tue, 2 May 2000, Jeffrey Elkner wrote:

> I want to thank Dorothea Salo for her important and thought provoking
> contribution to this discussion list (CP4E, Including Women (or Why More Women
> Aren't Hackers) - April 27, 2000).  She single handedly woke up the list with a
> very important problem that demands our attention.
<snip>
> All of us benefit from addressing this problem by helping to create a better
> world.  It is also the only way that CP4E can be truly effective.

I couldn't agree more.  I've long been casting about, trying to see how
CP4E can really make a difference (I know, I'm young, I still like that
phrase...).  Here's a gzipped core dump:


CP4E is a federally funded program, the lucky recipient of a very
selective grant.  This isn't a $10,000 grant from a state board of
education, or even from the DOE.  It's a $2 million grant from DARPA.

We shouldn't be developing just another curriculum -- it has been and is
being done already.  Look through the web, starting from e.g. the DOE
page, the Edu-Sig homepage, or the CPS homepage [1].  I'm sure we could
develop a 'killer app' curriculum, complete with lesson plans, support
code, development environments, visual aids, mathematical relevancy,
scientific modeling, and engaging graphics.

But I think that even such a 'killer app' will fail to usher in an era of
'Computer Programming For Everybody'.  It's going to lose out in a few
ways:

(-) the curriculum will not be universally adopted;
(-) the digital divide is a much larger problem, and can't be solved by
    schools, let alone by a curriculum; [2] and
(-) gender discrimination must, as Jeffrey Elkner says, be addressed
    explicitly.

Which is not to say I know what we should do.  But I think we should take
the popular support that Python has, and use it as a tool for social
change.  Perhaps we could start in on some popular utilities, adding
scriptability to them, and writing quantities of documentation describing
how to script them.  For instance, a scriptable IRC client would be mighty
useful to irc people.  If we can manage to get a good number of products
out there with "Python Inside" stickers, and perhaps encourage some sort
of integration between them (supporting OLE/COM/DCOM/ActiveX/<TLA of the
week> on Windows, for instance), then users would see it as to their
advantage to pick up a little bit of this Python stuff, because one little
bit will have broad applicability.


So I've said my piece.  Comments?

References:

[1] http://www.cps.k12.il.us/
[2] James Traub, "Schools Are Not the Answer."  New York Times Magazine,
January 16, 2000.

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|                         Dustin Mitchell                )O(        |
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