[racket-dev] actionable items, was: comments on "comments on learning Racket"

From: Matthias Felleisen (matthias at ccs.neu.edu)
Date: Mon Apr 28 10:12:47 EDT 2014

SAM: 

> Also, I think that in almost every course using DrRacket, the students
> will need to learn how to choose languages, because they will switch
> from one teaching language to the next. So I think this won't be
> unfriendly.

I am not sure this is true for simple high school courses or anyone who wants to run Bootstrap 2 off-line. 


LAURENT: 

>  o Are you a student learning to program?
>  o Are you an experienced programmer learning to use Racket?
> (why "/learning/ to use Racket"? I could well be that s/he's on a new machine) 
> 
> Why not simply "Choose a language" and give a list of the usual ones with explanations?


1. Yes, the second question is wrong. We need a better formulation, something like 

	"Do you want to create a #lang module?"

   I like this question because (a) most students will obviously know not to say 'yes' here. 
   I like it also because the 'know it all's among the students will be intrigued by #lang. 
	

2. From what I recall, we popped up the "Choose a language" dialogue until we decided to go for the current solution. That didn't work. I think two simple, plain English questions will work best. 

-- Matthias



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