You need to cool down.
I replied to this comment:
> I don't love graphical programming environments like this and Scratch and I can't quite put my finger on why I find them so unattractive. > A big part of it is that you can, to some degree, learn programming from this. But you absolutely cannot learn software engineering from this.
And you then showed off some embroidery stuff and things that I explained that in my own opinion, are not connected to real world software engineering/programming, and seem to serve Snap rather than things that you'd actually use in the field.
That's my opinion and I'm allowed to have my own. Otherwise all I could say is that you're right and its awesome. Right?
And here you are attacking me with things like:
"but it's a waste of your time, because his comments have no value. Have you looked at any of those valuable links I did post yet, or did you just get stuck in the worthless rabbithole of his posting history?"
"dead boot licking comments don't deserved to be linked or repeated"
Because apparently I'm not allowed to have my own opinions of blocky visual programming languages. A bit fascist isn't it?
Anyhow
"I attended Snap!Con in Barcelona, played around with TurtleStitch myself, and still have and cherish the cool textile artifacts (and also cool friends) I made.
And the TurtleStitch presentation included live streaming video of students of diverse genders and cultures and ages enthusiastically showing off and talking about the beautiful physical objects they designed, programmed, made, presented to their parents and the conference, and are rightfully proud of, and discuss what they learned from the experience."
Okay, how does this disprove my point that its more about making machined embroidery accessible vs. learning CS concepts?
And who would attend Snap!Con unless they were part of that community working on the ecosystem or deeply involved with it?
You're projecting that I'm arguing in bad faith, but clearly that's you here, I can't really engage with you properly when your replies are full of things like:
" In a nutshell or TL;DR for someone unwilling to put in the time and effort to learn or even consider evidence, and who talks about promoting curiosity but is incurious yourself, and who performatively refuses to recognize an obvious Nazi salute and feels compelled to repeatedly defend and praise Elon Musk after he does it twice in a row on international television: it's all about Constructionist Education, not promoting or showing off a product, or selling computer controlled embroidery machines, Arduinos, and robots, or even a cynical huckster perennially promising full self driving cars and trips to Mars."
I visited all the links you provided and still arrived in the same conclusion.
and you're saying I'm incurious. Can you just stop lying and spreading lies about me? And when have I praised Musk?
If you're so emotionally attached to this 'language' that you feel the need to dig up "dirt" on me from my post history and spread lies and tell others that I'm some kind of fascist, maybe you should reevaluate your life choices. I wouldn't get this mad over someone criticizing Go or Rust etc.
And it proves that you're unable to take criticism of your language since you're convinced that no matter what, you're right and that with you posting some conference talk links, others should become convinced that it's a super relevant language.
And with regards to Constructionism, from my understanding, the main point seems to be to use existing knowledge to acquire more knowledge, CS/programming in this case.
From the Wikipedia page:
"The following five strategies make problem-based learning more effective:
1. The learning activities should be related to a larger task. The larger task is important because it allows students to see that the activities can be applied to many aspects of life and, as a result, students are more likely to find the activities they are doing useful."
This is exactly my criticism. With Snap / etc. the larger task is just a demo or something inside Snap. maybe controlling some robot, okay.
But it's not something you'd see in the real world, it can't be "applied to many aspects of life" in the context of CS, it's mostly constrained to Snap and its environment.
My belief is that learning is done best when there is a connection to something real, not just a simulation or an exercise. With Snap, it inevitably is kind of just a demo. Whereas with real languages you can get close to how things are done for real, which serve as a motivator and invoke curiosity.
Again, if it's your opinion that Snap is successful and that's why people are using it to learn to code, then that's fine. I haven't seen that happen yet and I believe there are reasons as to why I haven't seen that happen.
And since I'm here in good faith (unlike you) I will provide links to my Nazi comments as per your accusations:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49589879 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49590610 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49589966
btw, I have literally criticized the wealth of Musk in HN before and how it's unsustainable, same with the AI datacenter buildout and financial consolidation that's happening right now.
Considering your vast experience and knowledge, I find your conduct pretty embarrassing here.