[Edu-sig] CTL: Computer Thinking Language

[Laura Creighton]

In a message of Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:27:28 MST, David MacQuigg writes:
>At 10:00 AM 3/2/2009 -0800, michel paul wrote:
>
>>Before I discovered Python a couple of years ago I was experimenting wit
>h a pseudo-code approach for expressing math concepts.  I had this kind o
>f stuff in mind:
>>
>>factorial(n):
>>    if n < 2 ---> 1
>>    else ---> n*factorial(n-1)
>
>I like the feeling of action in --->, but I also like the self-explanator
>y "return".  Any other suggestions?  Strong preferences?
>
>We could use a symbol other than = for assignment, just to avoid confusio
>n with the comparison operator and to introduce the idea of variables as 
>labels, not containers.  How about:
>
>a2 --> a**2
>a --> b --> c --> 0

Datapoint: the children I was teaching how to write games have all had
terrible problems with arrows.  Whenever I tried to use them to indicate
anything there was this large mental thud.  So my suspicion is that this
will make things harder, rather than easier.

In explaining things I found that words worked best.

and the words that worked were:

'is bound to'


Just my 2 kronor,
Laura