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

Hi, I'm also curious about this. Is a pure programming style like Haskell's less or more natural than an imperative mutable-state based one to kids without experience. I intuitively expect that for kids with a high-school background in mathematics would find the first more natural, but this is not based on any teaching experience. Does anyone have real-life experience with this or know of any related literature? Thanks Dominique 2011/1/27 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 :

...

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 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

_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe