> You clearly needed some more focused projects.
Yeap, I pretty much worked on something until I got distracted.
I really need to be interested to pay attention, and I usually need a
*reason* to be interested; like a project I'm working on.
I'd probably be medicated for this sort of behavior in most modern
American schools. ;-)
> I learned Borland's Turbo Basic to make it easier to modify the saved
> games for Moria. (At the time these were uncompressed and 90k.) The file
> format was reverse engineered -- things would've been much easier had I
> realized the file format was clearly documented in the C source. (But
> then, I was 9 and playing with it on my own.) My last BASIC program let
> me wander around the full map and hack on objects, monsters, and the
> player.
*lol* I remember running a hex editor on the binary of Moria and
seeing the "super god mode" code sticking out as an odd legible plain
text word in the middle of unrecognizable binary goop, so I wrote it
down out of curiosity.
It took me a few days to actually use it and figure out what it was, though.
> I have a friend who, IIRC, always writes an implimentation of Conway's
> Game of Life in any language he is learning. It is short enough it is
> doable, but complex enough that it gives him enough exposure to the
> language.
*lol* I'll have to do that with my latest "language", Alice
<http://www.alice.org>.
Alice is a java-equivalent "language" which is constructed via a drag
and drop interface with drop down menus and such. This makes it
literally impossible to make syntax errors, so students can focus more
on understanding programming concepts and fundamentals than on the
mechanics of how to "write" the language.
We're beginning to use it for teaching programming in our Middle School.
BTW, I've found teaching someone how to use a language is a pretty
effective "focused project" to get me to get a basic understanding of
the language and then while I'm teaching it, to get my understanding
tested and hammered on by questions and such so I usually end up
pretty well versed in the basic fundamentals.
I rarely get into anything too advanced, though, when I'm teaching an
introductory course; I have to find my own reasons to explore more
advanced topics.
> It also provides him with an immediate comparison of any two languages
> he had previously used.
Indeed. I've done Life in Java and Python, and I *probably* have
copies of that stuff around somewhere...
> Cheers,
>
> --
> Steven Black
Cheers,
--
Simón Ruiz
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
No comments:
Post a Comment