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Welcome

This book was started during the spring semester, 2005, in the Computer Science Department, University of Illinois. Design of some projects was done by members of the class CS 498lbp Topics in CS Education; contributing students will be listed in the acknowledgments. Parts of it were used and piloted here, there, everywhere, yada yada yada.

I hope it will serve as a guide to a fascinating and rewarding journey for many kids, teachers, and people who want to play with programming and have fun.

Initially, there were three goals for the book:
  • Introduction to Squeak (Etoys): The book will also act as a robust user guide to becoming a good etoys programmer.
  • Introduction to Programming: taken as a whole, the book will act as an intro programming book.
  • A Tour of Computer Science: The book's topical coverage will include explorations across CS, aimed at the middle school student.
At present, I am scaling back this last goal, although ultimately I hope to return to it. The primary focus at the moment is the first goal. We'll see.

Ideally, this book will be a self-contained introduction to CS in general, programming in squeak (by which I mean EToys) in particular, and aimed at grades 6 though 10, but interesting enough for adults, and easy enough to be accessible to younger kids. A bonus will be additional resources and notes to teachers, including suggested exercises, references and pointers for followup knowledge, assessment tools, tie-in with standards. Of course, that is the ideal. Right now it is a stream-of-consciousness dump of concepts, and suggested exercises, hopefully in the right order, to bring somebody who knows nothing about programming up to a competent hobbyist. Writing for kids is harder than for adults, so the current focus is aimed at the patient and forgiving party who can wade through my prose to the good stuff.

My latest thought is that there really are three different audiences, which will require completely different resources. Kids who want to explore on their own. Adults with programming experience, who want to know how to do and think in Squeak. Adults with no experience, who want a bigger picture and greater depth, so that they can mentor kids. Eventually all of this will be teased apart. I'm aiming right now somewhere between the two unexperienced populations.

Hmmm. My latest thought is that kids don't read, won't read, about programming, and are far too impatient to weed through the concepts and just want to jump in and do things, creating great confusion later. Best approach for them would be challenge projects with hints that fully expanded are in fact a tutorial.

Please go on to read the welcome for beginners and/or for experienced programmers.

Lenny Pitt, July, 2005

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