[Edu-sig] BASIC?

[kirby urner]

> Windows no longer comes with a programming language, which is a marketing
> decision on Microsoft's behalf.

Seems on OK response to all the flak they got for including a browser
(the "Netscape killer" IE).

People wanted them to stop taking advantage of their position as the
leading OS maker.  Stopping with including Java also made sense in
that light.  "If we're supposed to keep it bare bones, don't insist we
do Sun's work for free."

Now what if MSFT brings back a branded Python, i.e. IronPython for
.NET.  Are the Linux people going to start up their hue and cry again,
about how an OS maker shouldn't "bundle"?

That's absurd, right?  Every distro is a bundle of some kind.

What *would* be a travesty is if MSFT did anything to sabotage plain
old CPython from running, with Tk and everything, or wxPython, just
because it now has a "preferred" way of teaching Python to its
professional developer teams.  And what good is an OS that can't run
Java?  But MSFT's does, so that's a moot point.

> missing, thanks to Make magazine.  Embedded programming environments
> like the Arduino board[1] have never been more accessible, you can
> write code directly over the web in languages like Frink[2], and more
> consumer devices are intended to be user-hackable, for example the
> Roomba[3], Lego Mindstorms[4], the soon-to-be-released Chumby[5], and
> the Nokia 770 tablet[6].

Yeah, the engineers have done a great job of opening opportunities to
students.

But what have the teachers been doing?

Will Intro to CS get you any closer to coding your cell phone in
Python?  Will they even *tell* you that Nokia has Python-compatible
cells?

> I have to agree with others on this list, there's an embarrassment of
> riches to choose from.  My biggest puzzle is which environments to
> teach my kids first.

Your kids have a geek parent, so they're automatically in the loop.

I have this perhaps antiquated notion that a public school system
spreads such advantages, such that one's ethnicity does *not* become a
chief limiting factor, thanks to our generously stocked meme pool.

But whereas I see engineers pouring their hearts into our inventory of
share assets, I see precious little coming out the other end, where
real kids sit in real chairs staring at real chalkboards.

Where's the beef?

Why no Python in algebra class?  I put it to NCTM directly.  I think
we're owed really *good* explanations (merely issuing books might not
be enough this time).

Kirby