[Edu-sig] Re: The right learning environment

[Kirby Urner]

At 08:26 PM 3/19/2002 -0500, Arthur Siegel wrote:

>But it does explain why the Open Source movement and
>the internet have changed the intellectual lives of folks
>like myself.

Notepad, however, is a proprietary text editor on a
non-open-source OS.

>The fact is that DrScheme was - I am willing to bet -
>the best pre-Internet alternative there was. But now
>any environment that is in any way isolating - and
>yes Mathias it's an opinion/experience that DrScheme
>is (somewhat) - is no longer optimum.
>
>The Internet is the ultimate learning environment.

DrScheme has rich on-line teaching resources.  The
language itself is able to negotiate on-line protocols
such as http, although the tutorials don't focus on
this so much.  Given Scheme is as capable in principle
of doing CGI type stuff and Python or Perl, it'd make
sense to have more demos and examples of this in the
Scheme syllabi (both on-line and book form), likewise
XML parsing.  Many times, this is where students are
focussed, on web server issues.

>Students find a text editor you are comfortable with.
>There are plenty to choose from. I happen to
>recommend X, Y, or Z. but the important thing to know
>is that it doesn't really matter that much which you choose.

This is true of both Python and DrScheme -- any text
editor will do, but some are more "program editors" than
text editors (like Vi and Emacs) meaning they're syntax
aware.

Kirby