Gumberoo - Making a new learning language intepreter using FPC

[WILL]

I had a thought. You said that pointers was something that you didn't get until junior high right? Well why bother putting them in for the first version? When I first learned to program I started with only the functions I needed to do some of the interesting things then eventually I learned more to become a better programmer. So why not take that approach?

Start with the basic concepts and lessons, then make a second version OR a "Novice" or "Advanced" edition to teach the second set of concepts that you would learn later on. These editions would compliment each other as people learning the advanced stuff would still be familiar with the language enough that moving onto more complex concepts would be smoother that way.

If this is a project that you wish to put up as a teaching tool of sorts it's best to start with the beginning and then move upward into the next step one at a time. You could even do a 3rd edition that went on to teach the basics of OOP.

[code_glitch]

Thats an interesting way of putting will. My only potential worry about that is code maintenance - you'd have to fix bugs across each version... Unless, you had it fixed so you had a line like:
set language mode advanced
at the start, kind of like {$Mode ObjFpc}, the interpreter would know to switch out of 'easy' mode with more functions, pointers and etc...

Having said that, though, deathshadow - whats your take on scratch? Personally I actively persecute it... But thats just me

[deathshadow]

Having said that, though, deathshadow - whats your take on scratch? Personally I actively persecute it... But thats just me

It's actually something I looked at during my whirlwind tour of "wow these suck". It's too gimmicky, their website seems to be just thrown together any old way to the point I couldn't even figure out where the actual instructions for using it or doing anything in it actually are, and I didn't see any results built in it that were particularly blowing my skirt up.

Though much of that is just the technology it's based on. Flash can be very powerful, but to compile to actionscript, which is basically what it does... well... the net result leaves a lot to be desired... Crappy user input handling, oddball flickers of simple things like sprite movement... and that's before we talk the "IDE".

Which I naturally hate for the goofy illegible color contrasts -- but to be fair, I can't stand illegible acid trip of color syntax highlighting either; it's one of the first things I disable in any editor. (part of why I use Flo's Notepad2 as my primary). I didn't like it when Borland added it to TP4, I've not seen it improve in usefulness since; making giant colored boxes with text that doesn't line up in a clear manner with all sorts of pointless useless extra wording? I'll pass.

In a lot of ways SCRATCH reminds me of Logo -- you can't actually seem to make anything useful with it; and when the results are NOT as good as ROM Basic programs were on a TI-99/4a on a multi-ghz computer using a API that DOES have hardware acceleration... you've got problems.

[Super Vegeta]

Didn't had enough time to read this whole wall of text, but so far seems very nice. I laughed a bit since I haven't visited the forums for a few weeks and I began writing my own interpreter... and now bah! someone else is doing it too. Keep up your work and good luck.

[igmac]

On the idea of teaching programming basics in a fun way, have you looked at http://www.spacechemthegame.com/education

Also see http://zachtronicsindustries.com/Spa...0Educators.pdf for the PDF in depth education view.

It teaches some basic and also rather advanced fundamentals in a very novel way.

Regards,

Ian.

[deathshadow]

Tossed together a website for the project.



http://www.gumberoo.org



I also now own the .com and have it set up as a redirect.

yes, it's very gaudy... are the fonts too big?

[igmac]

yes, it's very gaudy... are the fonts too big?

I wouldn't say so deathshadow. It immediately said 'Kiddie Fun' to me when I looked at it.

I would use the words Bright & Lively, not the word Gaudy in describing it :-)