ActionScript as a teaching language

[Peter]

On Sat, 31 Dec 2005, Stewart C. Russell wrote:

> Peter wrote:
>
>> SWI Prolog + parser/lexer library + Tk bindings ?
>
> I didn't think it was possible to have a nastier syntax than my imagined 
> Perl/GFA Basic/PostScript sort-of hybrid, but Prolog takes the cake. It 
> doesn't look like any other programming language.

It looks like Horn clauses. Or like C-notation lambda expressions with 
':-', ',', '.' and ';' replacing a lot of parentheses. Or like plain 
math function descriptions. Which are more or less the same thing. Be 
f(x) = {x for x>=0, -x for x<0 }. Except the functions can be symbolic. 
neighbors(A,B,[L]) = { ... }. Writing a simple parser that parses a 
problem setup as above into valid Prolog is failry easy and could be a 
part of the default library. More importantly Prolog can explain what it 
is doing while running. With a simple filter to reduce the verbosity of 
a trace or explain it should be very helpful.

I don't think that this is a crazy idea. According to links posted on 
this list yesterday, using the highest level available language is the 
best idea. Prolog is certainly high level. For non-symbolic calculus 
only maybe Matlab or Scilab could be considered.

If the goal is to teach problem setup and solving, then high level 
language is good. If the goal is to grind and drill good typing habits, 
assembly looks great imho, followed by FORRTAN (66) and COBOL probably. 
If this is an intro course to prepare for a real CS degree then a subset 
of C++ or something like it should be taught imho, simply because that 
is the mainstream now.

Peter
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml