Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!jarthur!usc!sdd.hp.com!ucsd!hub.ucsb.edu!henri!doner
From: doner@henri.ucsb.edu (John Doner)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: scheme for kids
Message-ID: <6862@hub.ucsb.edu>
Date: 29 Oct 90 22:15:46 GMT
Sender: news@hub.ucsb.edu
Reply-To: doner@henri.UUCP (John Doner)
Organization: University of California, Santa Barbara
Lines: 26

My 13 year old son, who spends lots of time with our computer, has
expressed an interest in learning to program.  I could start him with
BASIC, which I guess is the canonical thing, and which I probably will
eventually show him.  But as an experiment, I decided to show him a
little bit about scheme first, on the theory that this might give him
a better handle on various programming abstractions.  So now I have
a few questions with which I hope some of you can help me:

(1) Is there a scheme implementation for the Apple II?  That's what
they use at his junior high.  (We have a Mac SE/30 at home, running
MacScheme.)

(2) Are there some fun programs he could run, and perhaps modify?
Things that might interest a 13-year old.  Games, for example.

(3) MacScheme offers a minimal set of graphics primitives.  Is more
available?  What in the way of graphics can be done in a "generic"
fashion, i.e., runnable on any sort of dumb terminal?

Any help with these questions, or other suggestions, will be greatly
appreciated.

John E. Doner	       | "The beginner...should not be discouraged if...he
Mathematics, UCSB      | finds that he does not have the prerequisites for
Santa Barbara, CA 93106| reading the prerequisites."
doner@henri.ucsb.edu   |      --Paul Halmos, Measure Theory