Zuckerberg Shows Kindergartners Ruby Instead of JavaScript 144
theodp writes "If one was introducing coding to 10 million K-12 kids over 5 days, one might settle on a programming language for examples more than a few weeks before D-Day. But the final tutorials for the Hour of Code aren't due now until the day they're to be taught, so Code.org was able to switch the example Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg uses to illustrate Repeat Loops from JavaScript to what looks like Ruby (earlier /. discussion of the JavaScript example), which will no doubt make things clearer for the kindergarten set working on the accompanying Angry Birds tutorial. Khan Academy, on the other hand, is sticking with JavaScript for its Hour of Code tutorial aimed at middle-schoolers, which culminates in a project showing the kids how they can draw a circular plate by invoking an ellipse function with equal major and minor axes. By the way, as Bret Victor might point out, the 2013 Khan Academy lesson looks a lot like circa-1973 PLATO!"
Re:Sigh (Score:4, Informative)
The traps in both javascript an ruby can make even a grown person's head explode, let alone a kindergartner.
I'm also not convinced by "block programming". OK, it's easy to make a pig move 3 steps forward by sticking three "move forward" blocks together. But that' gets old in minutes, and you want variables and functions. At that point (about an hour in) block programming becomes more of a hassle than typing "A=11".
As for programming languages, there's also Pascal. Just like BASIC, it was created to for teaching programming [wikipedia.org].
And why does everything need to be Angry Birds? (Which reminds me, nice slasvertisement again, timothy.)