This is a great tool to teach kids programming!
The teachers at my school were just completely clueless at teaching programming or anything to do with computers. We would just run through work sheets that told you what to type. Hardly anyone got any real instruction. It wasn't until DOOM came out that I got motivated to self-teach.
They were magical back then.
One would think so! It was taught at our school (didn't take the course myself, about 15 years old at the time) and I only remember my classmates complaining, that it was boring. Some of them wanted to learn "real programming" instead. Drawing shapes with a turtle felt overly childish and pedagogic even then.
Anyway, I'm hoping the authors see this. I tried Shelly for a while and here's what I think:
1. The tutorial needs background. Its text displayed over more text and that's tough to read. For the first point in the tutorial, I couldn't locate where it was visually and had to carefully read what the various parts of the screen were saying.
2. Make the editor stop complaining while I'm writing something. Its too aggressive and made me immediately think of https://i.redd.it/nygb741tho951.gif.
Overall, I like the concept. I'd have wished the syntax was more like javascript so someone learning this could more easily translate their skills to other parts of the web, but I guess we have to compromise that for the nostalgia and simple commands like `right 90` etc. I love this!
1. the background should be almost-opaque, with very little transparency. Can you share which browser/OS? Probably some missing CSS :)
2. Ha :D Maybe a grace period? Did you mostly mind the squiggly underline errors, or the red box that appears at the bottom? Giving feedback soon enough but not being aggressive is a delicate balance, there's probably room for improvement here.
2. Maybe that could work. A red underline is fine but the error at the bottom is the biggest thing. Instead of switching between neutral/error state, why don't you experiment with working/neutral state? If the code is fine, show a green tick at the bottom, else just show the error with grey color and a grey icon so it's visible but not attention grabbing. On the other hand, you'd get the advantage of getting people hooked with getting the code back to green. Positive reinforcement.
2.
There was a discussion on HN a few years back about Seymour Papert’s Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas (1980), which may be relevant if you're interested in the history of Turtle and Logo. [1]
I've been collecting resources for self-directed programming/learning that kids can use for at-home, project-based learning. Some family members are looking for ideas for their children.
I'll playtest it with a young learner and see how far they get through the tutorial.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18361665
[edited for clarity]
The tutorial is only a start for what we are planning, so this is an area we'd like to work on next. Hence any pointers or ideas are welcome :)
https://archiv.inet.sk/images/user/pastierik/kancelaria/zofk...
One little thing - is the opacity scale the wrong way round? I would expect high opacity to mean it's not very transparent and low opacity to mean it's mostly transparent.
Yeah, the tool is fine, I got nothing against it, just our attitude makes our world more cluttered and fragmented, we lost the way to communicate in programming world at large.
The Mess We're In - Joe Armstrong - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKXe3HUG2l4
This language is very niche, it will never get good support, tooling, doc, and maintenance.
I know making languages are fun, but unless fun is the main goal and adoption is not, craft a good lib with a clean and simple API.
Adopting this DSL would not be reasonable on the long run.
