Coding for 8th Graders

ShakyJake

<Donor>
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JS is a terrible first language to teach.
I disagree. It's a relatively simple language and that doesn't bog a person down having to deal with creating classes, strong typing, etc. You can just write functions, create objects and properties on a whim - hell, it's probably one of the most learning-friendly languages out there.
 

The Ancient_sl

shitlord
7,386
16
^

It's weird because all the reasons ShakyJake listed are exactly the reasons why it's such an awful programming language for the purposes of education.
 

Kovaks

Mr. Poopybutthole
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This makes me glad I'm not teaching apathetic kids and only have to deal with interested to enthusiastic professionals.
 

Palum

what Suineg set it to
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Honestly, I'd go the EDD route, Lego comes to mind as a great tool, programmable controllers and P Basic, Raspberry Pi, etc. if you need more tools/projects.

Coding is all well and good but I think having a tangible effect is a supremely powerful tool. It has the triple whammy of showing everyone their results, engaging in the philosophical argument of robotics and teaching them debugging logic errors in a practical manner through analyzing servo movement, pathing, etc.
 

fat12_sl

shitlord
20
0
Hey guys,

Thanks for all the fantastic discussion and replies. I'm glad this is a topic that everyone has a lot of strong input on. Speaking of Legos, I am required to teach a unit on robotics using the Lego Mindstorm kit. It comes with software that allows you to program the brain of the unit. I'm wondering, for those that are well-versed in programming, does the programming that's done with the kit software resemble coding/programming in any way?

One thing that seemed like it might is with the "SWITCH" action. With that, you can have it do something if one thing is done, while if it isn't done, it does a different set of commands. For example, we had our robot display a sad face if the touch sensor wasn't pressed in, but if it is pressed, then a smiley face is displayed and it says Hello.

Attachment 105175
 

Noodleface

A Mod Real Quick
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To me the language looks more like a scripting language rather than a regular coding language. It's still useful I think.

Also, it looks like Mindstorm supports third party language (real programming languages).
 

BrutulTM

Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.
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Mindstorms uses visual programming which is not that common but it is used in the real world. In my old job it was used extensively with LabVIEW to build automated testers and such.