Re: PiL 1

[Jorge <xxopxe@...>]

On jue, 2011-10-13 at 12:05 -0500, Javier Guerra Giraldez wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 11:46 AM, Jorge <xxopxe@gmail.com> wrote:
> > What i'd personally love, would be a book aimed at high-school level
> > students. Stress would not be on data modeling (OOP and stuff), but on
> > algorithm writing and problem solving. Something like a Pascal book 20
> > years ago. For people with no previous programming background, have to
> > start at what a "variable" is.
> > Ah, and in spanish. Have i hope?
> 
> i'd love to do something like that.   writing answers on StackOverflow
> i've found that i enjoy explaining things; but feel that a book means
> a lot more than my communications abilities.
> 
> still, having something published would be an incredible boost to my
> ego, even if only printed on demand and without any earnings.  what
> you put here seems to fall within my field of expertise, so maybe i'll
> dustoff my blog and start writing in small essay style, with the hope
> of someday joining it all in a readable (bookable?) PDF.

Just to add motivation. My use case is kids that programmed in
TurtleArt, a block oriented graphical language. They outgrew that
language, and want to program in something "real". At this point they
actually have an idea of how imperative programming looks.
All this is in the context of Butia project, where kids program a robot
that has a XO laptop as a brain
(http://www.fing.edu.uy/inco/proyectos/butia/). On the XO that usually
means Python, but "first programs" written in Python tend to be
extremely ugly, for some reason. So i wrote Butialo, a Lua IDE for the
XO laptop
(http://www.fing.edu.uy/inco/proyectos/butia/mediawiki/index.php/Butialo).  Trouble is, there is no Lua literature that is *really* introductory. And it's a lot of kids, and it will be more, so good pedagogical material is a must.

> something like SICP but without the Scheme basis, maybe with
> 'pluggable' sections using Lua, Python, C examples.  (no, not in the
> tone of LxTHW)
> 
> finally, i had never thought of that; but it wouldn't be extra work to
> do it simultaneously in spanish and english.
> 

Even if it was in english i would somehow translate it. And immediately
proof-run it with real kids (we have a group of grad students interested
in working) :)

Jorge