Educational programming language

From Exampleproblems

An educational programming language is a programming language that is designed primarily as a learning instrument and not so much as a tool for writing real-world application programs.

Some examples

• In the early days of computing, universities taught programming with machine language, assembly language, and then Fortran (in North america) and Algol (Europe). Business schools often taught Cobol.

• Pascal is the most well-known programming language that was designed with education in mind. From the late 1970s to the late 1980s, it was the primary choice in introductory computer science classes for teaching students programming in both the US and Europe. Its use for real-world applications has since increased, and regarding it as a purely educational programming language has since become somewhat controversial.

• The publication of Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs in 1984 changed the predominance of Pascal. The book uses Scheme to teach fundamental concepts of computing, not just the grammar of a programming language.
  In the meantime, the Scheme community has introduced several pedagogic programming environments that assist students with the learning process, including DrScheme, EdScheme, and 3D Scheme.
  Like Pascal, Scheme has grown to become a serious application programming language, suitable for many kinds of real life applications and is actively used in industry.

• Logo is a language that was especifically designed to introduce children to programming. An abstract drawing device, called the turtle, is used to make programming for children very attractive by concentrating on doing turtle graphics. Experience shows that children do learn to make the turtle (that is, program the turtle to) draw all kinds of pictures on the screen, starting with simple lines and moving later to the fanciest pictures.
  Even though conceived as a language for children, Logo is quite expressive and can be used by experienced programmers as well to write real life application programs. Logo is especially suited for introductory training in developing applications in the field of symbolic programming and artificial intelligence.

• A++ represents a more recent attempt at creating a programming language designed to provide an efficient tool for basic training in programming.

• Karel and Karel++ are languages aimed at absolute beginners, used to control a simple robot in a city consisting of a rectangular grid of streets.

• Squeak's eToys are graphical environments which may be used not just to teach programming concepts to kids, but also Physics and Mathematics simulations, story-telling exercises, etc.

• Kid's Programming Language is a freeware programming language and Integrated Development Environment invented in 2005. KPL emphasizes graphics and sounds, making it particularly easy to develop games and entertaining educational material. KPL is a simplified structured language, and offers component-based development features such as classes and methods. KPL is modeled on modern IDEs such as Eclipse and Visual Studio.NET, and intends to prepare a beginner to graduate to these or other professional development environments.

• Today the programming language has taken up a new novel arena with the advent of the GUI (Graphical User Interface) syndrome. Every individual is more active towards the usage of the available software, surf the net, enjoy communication via email, chats, video conferencing further.