Words of wisdom

I've always been a big fan of the Forth programming language. It is nothing like BASIC, but here is a page from forth.com with some words of wisdom from Chuck Moore that I figure are just good food for thought no matter what language you prefer.

http://www.forth.com/resources/evolution/evolve_1.html

Commodore 64 Twenty-fifth Anniversary

Here is a YouTube video of a 90 minute presentation celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Commodore 64 home computer. The C64 was a groundbreaking machine and I know I'm not the only one who learned a lot from this wonderful machine and similar ones like the TRS-80, the Apple II, the Atari 800, and the TI-99/4. I programmed Commodore computers in BASIC, 6502 assembly language and Forth. Great stuff.

Go check this out for a fun romp into the past. The presentation touches on much more than just the C64. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3754836267385299753

Missing the Point

I read a paper the other day that described a system for teaching kids programming. It was one of those robot simulations where the student learns programming by using a special mini-language to teach an on-screen robot to accomplish certain goals.

So in this case the language in question is a simple one, specialized for the robot ideas as a gentle way to introduce programming.

Later in the same paper they described how a newer version of the system switched to Java as the language for the robot. I am amazed how easily people are brainwashed into using the popular thing in place of the right thing. Instead of something simple use the "industry standard" language, no matter how much it might damage their minds. :-/

What would be better? I guess the robot language they were using before would be just fine. Or pick some other simple language if you're looking for mindshare. BASIC, LOGO, Forth, Smalltalk.