acbart

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm still hopeful for Python integration with Excel. That would be a real gamechanger, depending on how tight the integration is.

When it comes to training humans and animals, positive punishment is far less effective than most other training techniques like positive reinforcement. Don't Shoot the Dog[1]!

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Shoot-Dog-Teaching-Training/dp/0...

This will never work because it absolutely fails to scale, at a time when we have a complete lack of computing educators. Customized projects for each student? I have 159 students in my CS1 this semester, and I can barely keep track of them with the massive amounts of data I collect. The idea of making individualized assignments is beautiful but unrealistic.

You're awesome too Brian! Didn't mean to be exclusive, I know just know Jens better from SIGCSE.

I really enjoy Phaser, although I vastly prefer to use it with Typescript instead of JavaScript.

Very well deserved, Jens is an awesome person.

That's nifty. I've seen the "drag text code" a few times, and I think it's an interesting model. Certainly helps with the discoverability problem. I actually had that feature in BlockPy at one point, but I believe my collaborators said it was too confusing for the students.

If by "translation" you mean Mutual Language Translation (turns text into blocks, and blocks back into text, as you type/drag blocks) then yes. If you mean "translation between human languages" then less so. It supports whatever you can do with Blockly, minus whatever things I broke adding the MLT support. I'd love a PR to handle other languages, but again... time.

That's my hackish unit tester. You can see more information on the console log.

It sounds like you've had too many bad reactions to want to keep trying, but did you try Concerta/Ritalin? That's what I was on when I was younger, and it seemed effective. I'm on Vyvanse now.

The only major side effect that's a problem for me is the utter loss of appetite. Frustratingly, it's not that I'm not hungry, I just don't want food. So my stomach will start hurting and I force myself to eat, but it's a challenge. Plus earlier this year I had to give up sugar to account for prediabetes, every day is a struggle to make myself get enough calories. Still, the ability to stay focused on a task for 15 minutes, or even just process my students' sentences, is worth it.

I really wish some folks interested in the K-12 space would steal BlockMirror[1] from me and put it in more editors. I have BlockPy[2], but I'm not really trying to move aggressively into that space - I'm just a researcher. Still, I feel like having a dual block/text environment for Python would help make Python way more accessible to younger learners.

[1] https://blockpy-edu.github.io/BlockMirror/docs/index.html [2] https://www.blockpy.com/

Wait, wouldn't this actually be fairly simple to set up? I'll admit my Git knowledge is a little shaky, but couldn't you set up a Hook that runs when you commit a Docx/Pptx/etc. file to unzip it in memory first, and then another Hook when you checkout to zip it back into the original structure? I guess conflicts are the major issue... asking users to navigate the XML/binary structure stored inside could be a mess. A GUI could help, but that would invoke different issues.

ETA: Apparently right below this comment someone has already created this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24303611

I love Skulpt! I'm so glad that it's being actively maintained. Thanks for all your hard work!

Which part of the definition do you take issue with in this context?

> Concentration Camps: A place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard —used especially in reference to camps created by the Nazis in World War II for the internment and persecution of Jews and other prisoners

I'm extremely excited about this. I had been using a short-hand literal-based syntax like [int] for a while, but list[int] is obviously so much better.

I disagree, giving certain folks a platform only raises them up and legitimatizes them. Didn't the Reddit folks discover that shutting down hateful subreddits prevents them from popping back up effectively? I believe this is the citation[1].

[1] http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf

I like to the curriculum I'd been developing for the past few years was scaling pretty well. Most of the technology is reaching enough stability that I can give a ton of automated feedback without killing myself, I had a pretty low DFW rate, most students could complete my final programming problems in a proctored exam situation, and evaluations came back high. I wasn't happy with my project rubric scores, but I think I was on the way to progress with that and it was partially just too high expectations (I just want students to test and decompose more). I'm interested in how we can scale introductory computing experiences, and I think I was on a good path before they yanked out my proctored exams out from under me :)

Sadly, certification is more or less our job now in higher education. Wasn't how the system was designed, and isn't what most faculty think about. But it's really becoming accurate.

And I can't do that without proper assessments!

Djikstra - not a professor I would want to emulate.

I'm unconvinced that oral exams provide the most secure and consistent form of assessment. I'm not even sure how to evaluate such a claim, though, so it may have to stand as an opinion.

Well, it's not an easy suggestion, but certainly an interesting one. I'm going to think more about this one. Thanks for providing a new thought on a hard problem!

Yes, thank you for the clarification :)

Reduces the risk, but doesn't prevent it.

I'm 1-on-1 interviewing my 59 Algorithms students this semester. 20 minute interviews, and I have 2.5 TAs to help offset the workload. Starts on Wednesday, I'm absolutely dreading it. This would never scale to my 180 Intro students that I'll be getting this fall.

I'm 1-on-1 interviewing my 59 Algorithms students this semester. 20 minute interviews, and I have 2.5 TAs to help offset the workload. Starts on Wednesday, I'm absolutely dreading it. This would never scale to my 180 Intro students that I'll be getting this fall.

I still have yet to hear anyone propose a workable solution for the ultimate problem of remote assessment in CS: hiring someone to just do your work for you. Everyone keeps saying "oh just make it project-based" like I didn't have a student last fall who hired someone to do his final project. I only detected him cause the person he hired sucked and left bread-crumbs; how many students did I not detect because they hired competent people?

Blockly is definitely open source[1]. Scratch looks like Blockly because Scratch is now written with Blockly :)

[1] https://github.com/google/blockly

Perhaps if the conservative voices would stop saying stupid stuff like this, they wouldn't be systematically excluded from the conversation. In my particular subfield of CS, there's a "self-identified conservative" who's been more or less utterly rejected from the community because, in addition to their bonkers political opinions, it turns out they also have bonkers scientific opinions. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that they reject the scientific process. It's hard to find that compatible with doing science. Perhaps I have many secret conservative colleagues in my field, but the only one I've seen is not someone who I would ever wish to collaborate with.

This is cool. Random idea: set up a Blockly[1] mode for using blocks to generate the PlantUML. Even more amazing if you have it bidirectional with a text mode!

[1] https://developers.google.com/blockly

One of my hypotheses is that it's incredibly difficult (and relatively rare) to be able to turn non-programmers into Computer Scientists. It's much easier to turn programmers into Computer Scientists. The conventional model of trying to turn non-programmers into programmers at the same time as you turn them into Computer Scientists is not very effective.

I'm a university professor in CS. I don't teach people how to problem-solve, and I have never known what other people are talking about when they claim they teach that in their courses. I teach fundamental skills, and then I put my students in front of lots of problems. In an ideal world, they transfer that experience to new problems. My most important role is providing the motivation and structure to go tackle assignments that might be similar to the ones they tackle later on in their careers. I really like Amy Ko's take on the process: https://medium.com/bits-and-behavior/the-transfer-problem-in...

All of that pales to the real process going on: good students were matriculated into my program, and I credential them via a bunch of assessments that I wrote despite never having any classes on formal assessment design. If you gave us a random sample of the population, I doubt we'd be that great at turning them into Computer Scientists.