[Haskell & FP in Education] Welcome and introductions

[Michael Snoyman]

Thank you Chris for putting together this list, and all your efforts in the
education space in general! My name is Michael Snoyman. I use Haskell and
functional programming professionally, and do quite a bit of training at
the professional level, but have almost no experience at the beginner
level. I'm basically a self-taught programmer from grade school, where I
was given a QuickBasic book and had ample access to DOS based machines. My
interest here is that I'm basically the "get off my lawn" old guy, who's
watched my younger siblings grow up in a different world, one where GUI
interfaces dominate, and there's no incentive to _really_ learn how a
computer works. I want to make sure my kids have the same opportunity to
learn programming that I had. And in that process, I'll likely end up
needing to teach some of their friends too to help with peer pressure. I'm
not insistent that my kids learn Haskell or functional programming, but my
working hypothesis is that these will be the easiest things for them to
learn, and the easiest for me to teach.

> What education-related projects are you involved in, or have you been
involved in previously?

For the beginner level, I've been blogging about my experiences in my "kids
coding" blog post series. Since the start of the school year we've been too
busy unfortunately to continue much with it.

https://www.snoyman.com/blog/2018/08/kids-coding-part-1

I have lots of other tutorials and other write-ups at a non-beginner level,
mostly in Haskell, but with some Rust added in recently. I've sadistically
considered switching to Rust as a beginner language :)

> What other projects do you find exciting, intriguing, or worthy of
emulation?

I think Scratch is wonderful, in that it can easily be added to a classroom
curiculum by teachers who don't know much about computers. My eldest (10
years old) has gone through this at school. However, I don't think he's
really getting a great deal out of it, and he says as much. I'd love to see
something easily approachable but with more of a runway. I'm thinking back
to how I had Basic available on all computers around me by default for the
first 10 years of my life.

I realize that Code World may be exactly this :)

> Is there anything specific that you are definitely looking for from this
space?

I'd love to see others share their experiences with teaching young
children, and _especially_ how to keep them motivated. I find that with so
many easy distractions available on modern computers and devices, it's hard
for programming to compete for attention.

> What vision do you have for functional programming in education?  That
is, what general principles guide your thinking?

My kids understand math. They're already learning it in school. Teaching
them functions took all of 5 minutes. I don't want to corrupt them with
not-functions as found in imperative languages, I believe it will confuse
them. That's my guiding principle here.

On Sun, Dec 16, 2018 at 12:20 AM Chris Smith <cdsmith at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello, everyone!  Welcome to education at haskell.org.
>
> This mailing list grew out of discussions at ICFP 2018 about creating a
> space for collaboration and discussion of using Haskell and other
> functional programming languages in general education.  To jump-start that
> process, I'd like to invite everyone to introduce themselves and
> specifically share your goals, opportunities, vantage point, and
> interests.  The hope is that we'll be able to sort ourselves into
> compatible interests and ideas, to kick off more detailed discussion or
> collaborations.
>
> Some suggested questions to spur discussion:
>
> - What education-related projects are you involved in, or have you been
> involved in previously?
> - What other projects do you find exciting, intriguing, or worthy of
> emulation?
> - On the other hand, what projects or conversations should be happening,
> but are not happening yet?
> - Is there anything specific that you are definitely looking for from this
> space?
> - What vision do you have for functional programming in education?  That
> is, what general principles guide your thinking?
>
> I will reply with my own answers, and encourage you to do the same.
>
> Thanks,
> Chris
>
> P.S. I realize this email is long past due.  Between my job as a software
> engineer, volunteer teaching, and recent development on CodeWorld, I have
> again fallen into the trap of over-committing myself and falling behind on
> outside commitments.  I hope that late is still better than never.
> _______________________________________________
> Education mailing list
> Education at haskell.org
> https://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/education
>
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