Because my work was cited as an inspiration for the Khan system, I felt I should respond with two thoughts about learning:
- Programming is a way of thinking, not a rote skill. Learning about "for" loops is not learning to program, any more than learning about pencils is learning to draw.
- People understand what they can see. If a programmer cannot see what a program is doing, she can't understand it.
Thus, the goals of a programming system should be:
- to support and encourage powerful ways of thinking
- to enable programmers to see and understand the execution of their programs
A live-coding Processing environment addresses neither of these goals. JavaScript and Processing are poorly-designed languages that support weak ways of thinking, and ignore decades of learning about learning. And live coding, as a standalone feature, is worthless.
Also:
For fuck's sake, read "Mindstorms."
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