ActionScript as a teaching language

[Paul King]

On 31 Dec 2005 at 21:12, William Park (William Park <tlug-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org>) spaketh these wourdes:

> On Sat, Dec 31, 2005 at 08:53:50PM -0500, Christopher Browne wrote:
> > Another option would be Erlang.
> > 
> > It has much of the "Prolog nature," notably including the notion that
> > data is immutable, once values have been determined.  In effect, you
> > don't have "variables;" you bind values to names.

That would be a difficult concept for Grade 11's, many of whom are just barely 
grasping the concept of variables in the first place, and are just beginning to 
learn what a function is in algebra.

> > 
> > Unlike Prolog, which generally tries to be as near as possible to
> > untyped (sort of like Perl and Tcl), Erlang is strongly typed.  It is
> > similar to ML in that type information can commonly be inferred; you
> > often do not need to declare the types.
> > 

I like the idea that a language ought to be strongly typed for Grade 11's, but I 
think that they do need to declare things, especially if they are just learning 
programming style and technique. 
 
So, you are saying that once I do this:
    x = 3
that I can't do this later on:
    x = 2.51
because I had assigned it an integer value earlier (and therefore typed it as 
integer). I would say that would be too subtle, and in a program of over 100 
lines, it would also be hard to trace for a beginner.

> > And there are substantial applications written in Erlang; Ericsson has
> > been known to implement phone switches in the language, which is an
> > enormously-parallel application if there ever was one.

No one at this level is going to care about parallel processing.

> 
> It boggles rational mind that such esoteric languagues could even be
> mentioned in the context of High School computer cirriculum.
> 

Agreed, William.

Paul King

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