Initial commit of Splash, a programming language aimed at kids. This was all done over the course of a 2 hour bus ride, and is currently only half working. Feel free to browse, keep checking back for a fully working build (scripts currently compile but do nothing in the browser)
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Ryan McGrath
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readme.md
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Splash - Teaching kids to program with what they already know
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About a year or two ago, I set out to teach one of my younger brothers the basics
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of programming. I found myself somewhat astounded at a few things, though:
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1) The kid was so beaten down by the public school system that he expected everything
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to be explained and done for him
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2) He had no interest in trying something out until it was 100% shown to him.
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Some people might think this is fine, but I find it horrifying. Kids should be able
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to try out programming with a clear mind. See, while programming can be a lot of
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mathematics and hard logic, it's also an exercise in free thinking. Answers don't
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(at least, rarely do they ever) just come to you in this field, you're required to
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think.
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I looked at a few of the available options/languages aimed at kids: there's
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Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu/), a really graphical (almost lego-ish) approach to
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programming. The idea is to get kids thinking about logic without worrying about
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programming, but I've witnessed first hand that this approach doesn't work. For some
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reason, kids don't get things like branching logic up front, and Scratch does nothing
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to explain the core concepts, it just dumps kids into a playground. Alice (http://www.alice.org/)
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is very much in the same boat (if not worse).
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Shoes (http://shoes.heroku.com/) was a novel approach that had potential, but then someone
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decided to throw a fit and give up on a great concept. Go figure.
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How is Splash different?
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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One avenue where kids can still get creative and let their brains flow is creative writing.
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The act of coding can be very much likened to that of writing a story. When a child writes
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a story, they're programming without realizing it. The logic and thought that goes into a simple
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tale can easily make up an entire program.
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Splash is an attempt to capitalize on that capability. Splash programs are literally a story -
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the trick is that, like any grade school vocabulary exercise, you "define" the terms and words in
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your story. Check out this example:
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noun daniel:
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color: #307ace
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picture: box
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position: 50 50
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end
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noun store:
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position: 100 100
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end
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verb ran:
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who: daniel
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position: store
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end
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daniel ran to the store.
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The final sentence is the program itself. Before that, we've just defined the terms used. It's pretty cool - verbs
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all relate to an object, etc (e.g, who ran? Daniel ran).
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This is all very early stage, mind you. I've written a basic parser that translates things down...
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Wait, where does this run?
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Oh yeah, that's the best part.
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Splash programs "compile" down to Javascript, and can (will) run in any browser. The core of Splash will always be free
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and open source - kids shouldn't be denied access to a great learning experience.
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There's nothing else out there where a kid can write a program in a format they already know, and be able to run it anywhere
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(Desktop, Laptop, emerging devices (iPhone/iPad/Android). Rock on.
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Currently, to compile a splash program, you'll need Node.js and a Unix system. For portability purposes, this may be rewritten
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in the near future, we'll see how it goes.
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node lib/parser.js test.splash
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Questions, comments?
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Hit me up at the following:
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ryan[at]venodesigns.net
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http://twitter.com/ryanmcgrath
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http://venodesigns.net/
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