[racket] an interesting article on IDE's for education

Cute. 


On Sep 27, 2012, at 12:01 PM, Laurent wrote:

> 
> 
> On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 4:54 PM, Stephen Bloch <bloch at adelphi.edu> wrote:
> See http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/ .  A lot of inspiring and interesting ideas about how an IDE can make programs more comprehensible.
> 
> Some of these ideas could be incorporated into DrRacket fairly easily, e.g. abstracting a block of code by wrapping a function definition around it.
> 
> Some of the realizations are amazing! I'm wondering how well all these nice features carry on to different cases though.
> 
> I've been willing to do something similar for some time now, too. You prodded me sufficiently to do that for variables (way simpler than what is presented on the website though!):
> 
> With the script-plugin package installed [1], create a new script and replace the template code with the following:
> #lang racket/gui
> 
> ; Sample identity function:
> ;; string? -> (or/c string? #f)
> (provide item-callback)
> (define (item-callback str) 
>   (define var (get-text-from-user "Variable Abstraction" "Variable name:"
>                                   #:validate (λ(s)#t)))
>   (if var
>       (begin
>         (send the-clipboard set-clipboard-string 
>               (string-append "(define " var " " str ")")
>               0)
>         var)
>       str))
> 
> 
> Save the file, and a new menu entry should appear in the Scripts menu.
> 
> The script in action: http://youtu.be/qgjAZd4eBBY
> 
> Not prodded enough to do it for functions yet ;)
> 
> Laurent
> 
> [1] http://planet.racket-lang.org/display.ss?package=script-plugin.plt&owner=orseau
> 
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