New programming course

[Simbax]

LEFT *
RIGHT *
If so. Plus, constants should be created with const, no preprocessor. Clean code, please. Good habits should be taught from the beggining, do not make excuses like "it should be simple because children are dumb". Dumb children won't like programming anyway, why would someone care.

BTW, it can actually be done in CBOT right now, I was using it a few times.

Code:

float LEFT = 90.0;
float FORWARD = 5.0;

move(FORWARD);
turn(LEFT);

But I wouldn't make any constants like that at all, because

Code:

turn(FORWARD);

will work just fine, but it's probably not what the author meant and is confusing for everyone.

TBH I don't like the idea of teaching something not existent in real programming in order to just make it 'easier' for learning. The tool doesn't matter and should not be changed specifically for teaching. I'd call it no skill in teaching at all if the tool needs to be confusily simplified. How is that supposed to teach anything useful? Only concepts... Which can be taught very well in normal programming languages. Don't make kids dumber, if they are lazy and/or resistant to learning then such silly changes won't make a difference. Those who actually enjoy programming and will learn will get it without this (IMO) stupid modifications of the language itself. English is not a problem nowadays, I was personally learning it before I went to elementary school, so today situation should be much better. Children can use smartphones, so they can also learn normal programming. Stupid inventions like LOGO are not working because one does not learn useful programming through them. People want to create something, something awesome, no draw polygons. It's boring, unsatisfying... It's better for them to play Minecraft and do something with redstone for example. They are learning from it and having fun and it actually gives useful knowledge (e.g. logic gates). And the children have feeling that they are actually treated seriously, whereas drawing turtle, Polish commands etc. give quite the opposite feeling. And also this is a HUGE motivation to learn Java in order to mod the game.

That's why I would like to see a real programming language instead of CBOT, but CBOT at least has syntax close to real languages. Don't destroy the biggest advantage of Colobot because of some unneeded simplicity.

Sorry for any mistakes, it's not easy to write such long posts on a phone.