Leveraging the lesson browser

Liberty BASIC has a cool feature that many people don't take advantage of.  It's called the lesson browser.  It allows you to create a collection of different programs in a single file arranged in an outline fashion along with comments for each program.

This is great for:

1. Creating lessons (yeah)
2. Sharing ideas with others
3. Grouping related programs in a project
4. Tracking the evolution of a program (a kind of versioning)

Here is a screenshot of the lesson browser in action.  It is used to provide a tutorial and also example of new features of Liberty BASIC, but it can be used by users to create any collection of programs along with documentation.

Regarding How to Teach Programming

Andres Valloud posted "...The goal of this improved teaching is to allow everyone to take advantage of programming, not just CS oriented people..." http://blogten.blogspot.com/2012/10/regarding-how-to-teach-programming.html

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Later in the same paper they described how a newer version of the system switched to Java as the language for the robot.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.