[Haskell-cafe] Haskell for children? Any experience?

[Vo Minh Thu]

Hi,

You said "Haskell's immutability is good for mathematics but doing anything else
takes a great deal of up-front patience and perseverance[...]"

I guess it is true for imperative programmers... but are you saying
that about kids that just know how to use a calculator?

Cheers,
Thu

2011/1/27 aditya siram <aditya.siram at gmail.com>:
> Ye gods! A B & D [1] language for kids? At least give them a fighting
> chance [2] at becoming future developers.
>
> Haskell's immutability is good for mathematics but doing anything else
> takes a great deal of up-front patience and perseverance, two very
> rare qualities in that demographic if my own childhood is any
> indication.
>
> BTW I want to be wrong so if you do succeed with this I will feast on
> crow with gusto.
>
> -deech
>
> [1] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BondageAndDisciplineLanguage
> [2] http://scratch.mit.edu/
>
> On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 9:04 AM, Chris Smith <cdsmith at gmail.com> wrote:
>> So I find myself being asked to plan Haskell programming classes for one
>> hour, once a week, from September through May this coming school year.
>> The students will be ages 11 to 13.  I'm wondering if anyone has
>> experience in anything similar that they might share with me.  I'm
>> trying to decide if this is feasible, or it I should try to do something
>> different.
>>
>> To be honest, as much as I love Haskell, I tried to push the idea of
>> learning a different language; perhaps Python.  So far, the kids will
>> have none of it!  This year, I've been teaching a once-a-week
>> exploratory mathematics sort of thing, and we've made heavy use of
>> GHCi... and they now insist on learning Haskell.
>>
>> (By the way, GHCi is truly amazing for exploratory mathematics.  We
>> really ought to promote the idea of Haskell for elementary / junior-high
>> level math teachers!  It's so easy to just try stuff; and there are so
>> many patterns you can just discover and then say "Huh, why do you think
>> that happens?  Can you write it down precisely? ...")
>>
>> --
>> Chris Smith
>>
>>
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