[plt-scheme] 3rd-8th Grade

On Mar 20, 2006, at 05:59, Matt Jadud wrote:
> By-and-large, visual programming doesn't scale, and I'm not  
> confident that it's necessarily good/great/anything from a strictly  
> learning perspective. Put another way, I agree with Mathias---I  
> don't know if it helps with algorithm visualization and understanding

When people write about tail call elimination and activation records,  
it is the imagery it evokes that helps me understand how things  
actually work, and I need this even more when trying to understand  
continuations.  With the image of what's in memory, continuations are  
as simple as my kids' board games.  Without the images, continuations  
feel like quantum mechanics.

If I look at CLRS's algorithm illustrations [1], they provide the  
additional information I need to see something simple underlying the  
terse math notation.  Similarly, the visuals in PLT's debugger help  
me understand what is actually active.

I agree with Matthias, "This is interpretation not synthesis. In the  
opposite direction, it's limiting."

Geoffrey
--
Geoffrey S. Knauth | http://knauth.org/gsk

[1] Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest and Stein