[plt-scheme] Scheme contradictions

From: ialt (ialt at tu-sofia.bg)
Date: Wed May 3 01:46:37 EDT 2006

I was a hischool teacher too and in my experience there is a strange thing:
I was teaching Visual Basic but I try to implement scheme 
(or logo - logo is a great language, one of the best in my opinion) philosophy 
(functional / declarative programming ). As s programming style it was great -
in 1/2 hour I was able to make "small"game - a plane could fire rockets to
 another plane (the great was the simplicity and speed of coding).
You say it should be interesting for students, but there were 2 groups 
first: students very intelligent - they started to make changes  in the program
and make it better.  but these students did not need games to be interested in 
programming - they was eager to learn without any fun or games.
and the second group: little bit lazy and indifferent - as they see the game
they said - oh the teacher was made a game . he he but the "Counter Strike" is
better... and that was all . So games and fun is not enough to make students 
interested unfortunately.  The valuable reason to teach scheme I thing is not 
the language itself , but the results of learning this concrete style of
programming - declarative programming as it is more close to way human think.

There was observation that students that learned scheme have increased their
 results in the other subjects too - I  think this is the reason to teach 
scheme.
My experience showed the same , but only in students that was interested in
programming. I thing it was made by thems attitude to education 
and scheme programming style (as far as this style is possible to implement
in VBasic) only helped them , but even this is enough. 
Even more: I had one student with slight mental desеаsе but very interested in
programming - he eventually got slightly better - perhaps it was done thanks to
scheme style ? 

best regards



> When it comes to learning the language it is very difficult outside of a 
> classroom environment. There are SICP and HtDP but taken outside of a 
> classroom setting they take a great deal of determination to get through. 
> Compare this to Logo, you start out drawing little pictures and writing 
> small conversations you can have with the computer. Fun and interesting. 
> Netlogo, make a landscape with a hundred little turtles that will run up the


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