What Rev Needs -- Again (was "Why is Konfabulator "Pretty?")

Jim Hurley jhurley at infostations.com
Wed Dec 7 09:50:43 EST 2005


>Scott Rossi wrote;
>
>
>  > As a matter of fact, since the accusations are hurling, flames are flying,
>>  and there's generally a lot of smoke and debris around, I'd like to take
>>  this opportunity throw some fuel on a different fire.  I'll try and put this
>>  as non-ageist as I can:
>>
>>  Rev developers are too old.
>>
>>  Many of us have been around the "development block" many times, some of us a
>>  lot more than others, and we wear this history like a badge of honor.  This
>>  honor is unquestionably well deserved, but it wasn't until a newer Rev
>>  community member came up to me during RevConWest and asked the following
>>  question that it hit me:
>>
>>  "This conference is great, but where are all the young people?"
>>
>
>
>
>Sarah Reicheit wrote:
>
>
>
>Good point, Scott. I know we have a few tertiary educators on this
>list, but I would love to see Rev push into secondary schools. My
>middle son (13) is starting a programming course next year and they
>will be using Visual Basic. He has asked his teacher if he can use
>Revolution instead, since he is already familiar with it. She is
>agreeable, but I don't know if the school will be prepared to pay for
>Rev when they already own VisualBasic.
>
>Cheers,
>Sarah


Sarah et. al.,

Although I come from the tertiary branch of the educational system, 
my first objective for RR would be in the primary and secondary 
schools. And for this reason I support Rev's stated objective of 
implementing Turtle Graphics for Revolution.

By implementing TG  I mean creating another class of controls, turtle 
controls, like buttons, only different. Their properties would 
include position (standard Cartesian coordinates with a user defined 
origin-not the same as screen coordinates), heading (standard 
Cartesian polar angle-0 along the right-pointing x-axis0, pen state 
(pen up or pen down) so that they may draw (leave a trail) as they 
move.

They would have an augmented vocabulary, responding to such commands 
as Forward, Back, Right, Left, setXY, setRA, incXY, and functions 
such as xyCor(of the turtle), direction(of the turtle), distance(to 
any to any point), heading(direction to any object) etc.

And the course content would be directed toward programming as a 
general problem-solving tool, as opposed to a course in computer 
programming, recognizing that programming is a generic tool, useful 
in a wide variety of endeavors.  Examples would include, beside text 
manipulation, applications in the sciences, acknowledging that every 
scientist should have some programming experience, and that this is 
the audience most likely to be attracted toward, and in need of such 
a course.

(Some examples of application of TG to mathematics and the sciences 
can be found in:

go stack url http://home.infostations.net/jhurley/TurtleGraphics.rev

Jim




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