[Year 12 SofDev] Back to BASIC(s)

[Guy Flaherty]

I second Laurie's suggestion of going with Python. I use it in Year 12 and in a Year 10 IT Elective and it is very good for teaching programming basics. Last year I taught game programming with it to Year 10 students and they managed to get a fair bit out of it, with a good number electing to do Software Development this year. 

Python actually lends itself to teaching programming because of the way you are 'forced' to write more readable code and by being a fairly consistent language. If you do manage to have any students who become adapt at programming in it, you can easily extend it in almost any direction as well, due to its high level of real world application use.

One of my pet peeves with Software Development is that we actually have to create a GUI application. I am not sure why this is specified, as I would prefer to concentrate on the actually programming and less on event-based actions that can be a lot like making a form in Access. I would like to actually concentrate on things like network applications and client/server
stuff instead of GUI layouts. I find the students actually start to appreciate that there is more to computers and programming once you stop doing everything in a GUI. It is just hard work to convince them that it will be interesting and fun if they give it a go!

Good luck with your course,

Guy Flaherty
Xavier College


>>> Laurie Savage  30/06/10 1:46 PM >>>
Nice approach Mark; have you thought about Python? I've been playing around 
with it with a good year 9 class and they seem to get it. My reasoning is 
that simple Pyhton scripts read very much like structured English so as long as 
the kid can grasp the logic the syntax more or less follows and OO and GUI 
programming can follow in the same language.

Laurie Savage
Pascoe Vale Girls College

Just recently, on Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 01:07:23PM +1000  in fact, Mark KELLY mentioned:
> Hi All.
> 
> While I haven't had an SD class for a while (low enrolments and all), I will
> be taking a year 10 IT elective in the coming semester which is sort of a SD
> precursor.
> 
> Having been annoyed in the past by programming introductions that stressed
> the GUI at the expense of 'real' programming (e.g. the spent most of their
> time manipulating object properties and never discovered variables, arrays,
> loops and logic) I have decided to go back to basics... literally.
> 
> To force the kids to focus on fundamentals I wanted to start with good ol'
> QuickBASIC that has no GUI at all.  Alas, it proved impossible to get it to
> run under Win7.  That's when I found QB64 at http://www.qb64.net.
> 
> This is a nice rendition of reverse engineering QB that will work happily in
> a Win7 64 bit environment.  It will be good to get the kiddies away from
> frills and back to the meat-and-vegies of programming.  Only then will I get
> them into GUI and OOP.
> 
> Enjoy the hols
> 
> Mark
> 
> -- 
> Mark Kelly
> Manager - Information Systems
> McKinnon Secondary College
> McKinnon Rd McKinnon 3204, Victoria, Australia
> Direct line / Voicemail: 8520 9085
> School Phone +613 8520 9000
> School Fax +613 9578 9253
> kel at mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au
> 
> Webmaster - http://www.mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au
> IT Lecture notes: http://vceit.com
> Moderator: IT Applications Mailing List
> 
> Korma: the philosophy that what you get out of a curry depends on what you
> put into it.

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-- 
Laurie Savage
====================================================================
Markbook/Moodle Coordinator::Pascoe Vale Girls College::03 9306 2544
====================================================================
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Date: 2010-06-30 13:45:37.321
From: sofdev-bounces at edulists.com.au
To: g.flaherty at xavier.vic.edu.au
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