[racket-dev] New error messages for *SL

A click away can be one too many.  Students have enough difficulty
finding documentation as it is.  The reference for ISL cond should
include all the necessary details of ISL cond.  How about we have a
note saying that ISL cond is the same as ASL cond, then write it all
out anyway.  And presumably we don't need to do it by duplicating
code, we can define it one place in Scribble and just use that text
twice.

--Carl

On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 6:31 PM, Matthias Felleisen <matthias at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
>
> If it is a click away and if the idea is that students got to B because they went thru A?
>
> I admit that there are instructors who use only ISL+ or ASL. But should we accommodate the special ones or the ones that use the language hierarchy as intended?
>
>
>
>
>
> On Jul 6, 2011, at 5:51 PM, Jay McCarthy wrote:
>
>> If you read the documentation as a textbook when you start
>> programming, I can see wanting to see something that says "cond is the
>> same as before". But, if you read the documentation as a reference
>> when you have a problem it is frustrating to chase through a few links
>> to get the "real" documentation.
>>
>> Is that the idea, Guillaume?
>>
>> Jay
>>
>> 2011/7/6 Matthias Felleisen <matthias at ccs.neu.edu>:
>>>
>>>
>>> Why is it pedagogical to repeat information in the
>>> ISL documentation that the BSL documentation already
>>> presented?
>>>
>>> -- Matthias
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jul 6, 2011, at 9:36 AM, Guillaume Marceau wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 9:14 AM, Matthew Flatt <mflatt at cs.utah.edu> wrote:
>>>>> In the case of the HtDP languages, was the choice to duplicate all the
>>>>> text deliberate, or was it a side-effect of some other change?
>>>>
>>>> Yes, this was a deliberate move away from the no-duplication style
>>>> used in the professional documentation, for pedagogical reasons.
>>>>
>>>> At each language level, I gathered in a separate section called
>>>> "Common Syntax" the forms that that level has in common with the
>>>> previous level. The idea is to make it possible to get a quick sense
>>>> of of the commonality between the levels, while giving the students
>>>> confidence that documentation page they are looking at is
>>>> comprehensive.
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Jay McCarthy <jay at cs.byu.edu>
>> Assistant Professor / Brigham Young University
>> http://faculty.cs.byu.edu/~jay
>>
>> "The glory of God is Intelligence" - D&C 93
>
>
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