[sapug] competition idea

[stephen white]

On 07/03/2007, at 9:52 PM, Janet Hawtin wrote:
> There is an idea to have a competition to encourage girls to get into
> programming and IT. It has been suggested that using python for a
> competition in schools might be a good way to do this.

I don't think Python is a good choice since it's mainly text, and has  
very little in the way of graphics and sound without some complicated  
libraries. I would have suggested Flash and ActionScript, except  
that's also far too complicated for confidence boosting results.

Ironically, even Objective C with embedded Smalltalk and Cocoa is  
much simpler than either of the above two, even though I also  
wouldn't recommend this option as it's too complicated as well. It  
starts easy but extending crosses too many different domains.

Something like this combination of Scheme and Cocoa would be great,  
except I doubt that you have Macs:

	http://impromptu.moso.com.au/

Unfortunately, I can't think of anything I would suggest for Windows  
or Linux as those environments suck major shit for multimedia, sinc  
you have to jump in the deep end for any results. The simplest  
environment is ironically just C and OpenGL plus a bit of GLUT.

I think you've got a snowball's chance in hell of attracting interest  
in IT and programming without a decent setup, so you should throw  
your PCs away (and delete Python while you're at it!).

--
   steve at adam.com.au