Documentation & Books

[Dan Shafer]

Nice idea, Jim. I've downloaded it and I'll go through it over the next 
few days.

Many years ago there was a book (actually a mini-series) called 
"Programming for Poets" that taught fundamental programming to 
right-brain types, avoiding math almost completely and focusing a great 
deal on string processing. This was well before the days of the GUI or 
graphical IDE. I have obtained the rights to revise that book for the 
Rev audience but, frankly, the response to my book and other offerings 
so far has been disappointingly small, so I haven't had the incentive 
to go do that.

But adapting popular and usable texts to use Rev would be a potentially 
fruitful ground to explore if the market were big enough, I suspect.

Dan

On Jul 8, 2004, at 12:05 PM, Jim Hurley wrote:

> It is with some hesitation that I offer this in connection with this 
> discussion of books and documentation.
>
> Some years ago I wrote a small book: "LOGO Physics", Holt, Reinhardt 
> and Winston
>
> It was intended to provide a workbook for students of LOGO, to advance 
> their LOGO skills and allow them to learn a little physics on the 
> side. Once they tire of drawing polygons, perhaps they would like to 
> draw a planetary orbit based on Newton's laws of motion.
>
> Later, after I had discovered HC, I translated the book into 
> HyperTalk, which I felt was much better suited to beginning students. 
> LOGO was a LISP derivative, and, while list processing is well suited 
> to artificial intelligence, it is not the best language for beginning 
> students.
>
> I have made a few minor changes to make it more suitable to RunRev, 
> and put a copy of this MS Word file on my web site:
>
> http://home.infostations.net/jhurley/
>
> (Look for "Programming") Caveat: It has not been class tested or even 
> proof read.
>
> This is not a challenge to Dan's book, or any book intended to teach 
> the fundamentals of programming. It is intended to be used in an 
> Advanced Placement course in High School for science students--a 
> course which doesn't exist. It is not appropriate for students 
> interested in Computer Science. It is the kind of programming that 
> scientists use, i.e. light on theory, heavy on whatever-works.
>
> I do think the use of Turtle Graphics would be a useful addendum to a 
> high school programming course. The student gets instant gratification 
> in graphic format, and offers a change of pace to text processing.
>
> I believe there may be a Turtle Graphics tutorial in the works at 
> RunRev.
>
> Jim
>
>
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