From gatorreina at gmail.com Tue Sep 13 08:43:56 2016 From: gatorreina at gmail.com (Richard Reina) Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2016 10:43:56 -0500 Subject: [Chicago-talk] Teaching kids perl Message-ID: I have a 10 year old and an 11 year old. I would like them to learn a little perl and am trying to come up with a mini (30 day) perl course designed for them that will make it fun. Something like Randal Schwartz stroll thru perl from his Learning Perl book but eaiser. What I was thinking was something like the following but I run out of ideas after about 3 days. If anyone can help with more days worth of ideas I would be grateful to here your suggestions. Thanks Day 1: Create a Hello World script. Day 2: Make hello world script ask for users name capture it and respond "Please to meet you "user". Day 3: Ask user if they wan't to know the date and time and give it to them if they type "y". Day 4: Day 5 .... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From zelein at gmail.com Tue Sep 13 08:56:24 2016 From: zelein at gmail.com (Brian Mielke) Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2016 10:56:24 -0500 Subject: [Chicago-talk] Teaching kids perl In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <709B0349-0295-4426-8967-610099DE6FF3@gmail.com> Well for most kids (or even adults now) they?ve never used a command line before. If your kids have not, you may want to do a Day 1 class to teach them command line stuff, listing directory contents, changing directory,... using a text editor to create, edit, and save a file. Other classes that I can quickly think of include: reading/writing a file in perl commandline perl to reformat a file contents or processes output ( example would be extracting/removing a date string or file name from a log file?s contents ) -Brian > On Sep 13, 2016, at 10:43, Richard Reina wrote: > > I have a 10 year old and an 11 year old. I would like them to learn a little perl and am trying to come up with a mini (30 day) perl course designed for them that will make it fun. Something like Randal Schwartz stroll thru perl from his Learning Perl book but eaiser. What I was thinking was something like the following but I run out of ideas after about 3 days. If anyone can help with more days worth of ideas I would be grateful to here your suggestions. > > Thanks > > Day 1: Create a Hello World script. > Day 2: Make hello world script ask for users name capture it and respond "Please to meet you "user". > Day 3: Ask user if they wan't to know the date and time and give it to them if they type "y". > Day 4: > Day 5 .... > _______________________________________________ > Chicago-talk mailing list > Chicago-talk at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/chicago-talk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Andy_Bach at wiwb.uscourts.gov Tue Sep 13 09:05:01 2016 From: Andy_Bach at wiwb.uscourts.gov (Andy_Bach at wiwb.uscourts.gov) Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2016 11:05:01 -0500 Subject: [Chicago-talk] Teaching kids perl In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > I would be grateful to here your suggestions. Maybe not day 4 but soon - generate html, generate html from an input and generate and handle a form (use CGI example). The coolness of a working web page is a good hook, I've found, even if some of it is still magic. Read/munge a data file. Hmm, googling "perl for kids" gets a number of interesting hints (perlmonks) and: http://yesistilluseperl.blogspot.com/2010/04/programming-for-kids.html Where he plans to teach them Ruby (by a book) and then Perl - sort of like Churchill's "and Greek for a treat!". I did just start looking at Wolfram/Alpha's site - there's a bunch of stuff for "beginners" http://www.wolfram.com/language/elementary-introduction/ though it's a little deep. Still you can do a lot in a little code so there's quick positive feedback. Seems like there's stuff for teaching younger kids too. a ---------------------- Andy Bach Systems Mangler Internet: andy_bach at wiwb.uscourts.gov Voice: (608) 261-5738, Cell: (608) 658-1890 I'm excited about the proposal to add a "brontosaurus" emoji codepoint because it has the potential to bring together a half-dozen different groups of pedantic people into a single glorious internet argument. Randall Munroe - http://xkcd.com/1726/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jim at jimandkoka.com Tue Sep 13 09:12:45 2016 From: jim at jimandkoka.com (Jim Thomason) Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2016 11:12:45 -0500 Subject: [Chicago-talk] Teaching kids perl In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: To be brutally honest, Perl just ain't cool like it used to be any more. So most of the "teach kids to code" things out there are probably going to be in another language - probably python, which seems to be the dominant thing nowadays. Javascript to a lesser extent. I think your best course of action would probably be to start with one of those courses as a framework, and just port it to use Perl as the language instead. That way, you're not creating a curriculum from scratch and are basing it off of something existing without trying to guess a good pace to move at. On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 10:43 AM, Richard Reina wrote: > I have a 10 year old and an 11 year old. I would like them to learn a > little perl and am trying to come up with a mini (30 day) perl course > designed for them that will make it fun. Something like Randal Schwartz > stroll thru perl from his Learning Perl book but eaiser. What I was > thinking was something like the following but I run out of ideas after > about 3 days. If anyone can help with more days worth of ideas I would be > grateful to here your suggestions. > > Thanks > > Day 1: Create a Hello World script. > Day 2: Make hello world script ask for users name capture it and respond > "Please to meet you "user". > Day 3: Ask user if they wan't to know the date and time and give it to > them if they type "y". > Day 4: > Day 5 .... > > _______________________________________________ > Chicago-talk mailing list > Chicago-talk at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/chicago-talk > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sean at blanton.com Tue Sep 13 11:07:21 2016 From: sean at blanton.com (Sean Blanton) Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2016 13:07:21 -0500 Subject: [Chicago-talk] Teaching kids perl In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: We were just talking in the office about 'C++ for Kids'. (No opinion yet). Teaching the command line is important: cd and ls, and my then 7 year old picked up the basics of vi no problem. Even though Perl is not as trendy right now, I think it is a fantastic language to start with. Don't need Python's half-assed object oriented notation, when you don't want to be teaching object oriented programming yet. The natural language roots, simple commands and straightforward procedural program are benefits of Perl. print "Johnny " x 30 Where, "johnny" is your kid's name is about as easy as it gets C++ also has an abstraction difficult to deal with at the beginning "What's #include ?". You have to explain libraries, essentially, and then functions (int main...). It's not bad to start with the fundamentals, but starting with abstract concepts may lead to waning interests the younger you go. My son wanted to program a video game, so we did a text-based Perl program that did "Choose your character; get random numbers to hit and be hit and subtract hit points and see who dies first" program. That was very easy and quick in Perl and I got a "cool" and an "I-want-to-do-more". Regards, Sean Sean Blanton sean at blanton.com On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 11:12 AM, Jim Thomason wrote: > To be brutally honest, Perl just ain't cool like it used to be any more. > So most of the "teach kids to code" things out there are probably going to > be in another language - probably python, which seems to be the dominant > thing nowadays. Javascript to a lesser extent. > > I think your best course of action would probably be to start with one of > those courses as a framework, and just port it to use Perl as the language > instead. > > That way, you're not creating a curriculum from scratch and are basing it > off of something existing without trying to guess a good pace to move at. > > On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 10:43 AM, Richard Reina > wrote: > >> I have a 10 year old and an 11 year old. I would like them to learn a >> little perl and am trying to come up with a mini (30 day) perl course >> designed for them that will make it fun. Something like Randal Schwartz >> stroll thru perl from his Learning Perl book but eaiser. What I was >> thinking was something like the following but I run out of ideas after >> about 3 days. If anyone can help with more days worth of ideas I would be >> grateful to here your suggestions. >> >> Thanks >> >> Day 1: Create a Hello World script. >> Day 2: Make hello world script ask for users name capture it and respond >> "Please to meet you "user". >> Day 3: Ask user if they wan't to know the date and time and give it to >> them if they type "y". >> Day 4: >> Day 5 .... >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Chicago-talk mailing list >> Chicago-talk at pm.org >> http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/chicago-talk >> > > > _______________________________________________ > Chicago-talk mailing list > Chicago-talk at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/chicago-talk > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From telcodev at gmail.com Tue Sep 13 11:28:06 2016 From: telcodev at gmail.com (Joseph Werner) Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2016 14:28:06 -0400 Subject: [Chicago-talk] Teaching kids perl In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Well, I have a 9 and an 11 year old. I opted to teach them programing in C first. My thought was that I wanted to shield them from the magic that Perl does for their first programming language. We will make it to Perl in a couple of years. As Brian Mielke points out, most of the first few pages on the book have served as fodder for learning the basics of the command line. Best Regards, [Joseph] Christian Werner Sr On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 11:43 AM, Richard Reina wrote: > I have a 10 year old and an 11 year old. I would like them to learn a little > perl and am trying to come up with a mini (30 day) perl course designed for > them that will make it fun. Something like Randal Schwartz stroll thru perl > from his Learning Perl book but eaiser. What I was thinking was something > like the following but I run out of ideas after about 3 days. If anyone can > help with more days worth of ideas I would be grateful to here your > suggestions. > > Thanks > > Day 1: Create a Hello World script. > Day 2: Make hello world script ask for users name capture it and respond > "Please to meet you "user". > Day 3: Ask user if they wan't to know the date and time and give it to them > if they type "y". > Day 4: > Day 5 .... > > _______________________________________________ > Chicago-talk mailing list > Chicago-talk at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/chicago-talk From madcityzen at gmail.com Tue Sep 13 11:28:49 2016 From: madcityzen at gmail.com (Doug Bell) Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2016 13:28:49 -0500 Subject: [Chicago-talk] Teaching kids perl In-Reply-To: References:

Message-ID: Yeah, that kind of game is easy and fun. From there you can add even more concepts like file i/o (store characters and enemies in files and retrieve them later), moving around levels (data structures containing the rooms in the level), different kinds of enemies (starting with data structures and then moving to OO programming and polymorphism), and you can easily translate that to the web to add graphics and even sound. Doug Bell madcityzen at gmail.com > On Sep 13, 2016, at 1:07 PM, Sean Blanton wrote: > > We were just talking in the office about 'C++ for Kids'. (No opinion yet). > > Teaching the command line is important: cd and ls, and my then 7 year old picked up the basics of vi no problem. > > Even though Perl is not as trendy right now, I think it is a fantastic language to start with. Don't need Python's half-assed object oriented notation, when you don't want to be teaching object oriented programming yet. > > The natural language roots, simple commands and straightforward procedural program are benefits of Perl. > > print "Johnny " x 30 > > Where, "johnny" is your kid's name is about as easy as it gets > > C++ also has an abstraction difficult to deal with at the beginning "What's #include ?". You have to explain libraries, essentially, and then functions (int main...). It's not bad to start with the fundamentals, but starting with abstract concepts may lead to waning interests the younger you go. > > My son wanted to program a video game, so we did a text-based Perl program that did "Choose your character; get random numbers to hit and be hit and subtract hit points and see who dies first" program. That was very easy and quick in Perl and I got a "cool" and an "I-want-to-do-more". > > > > > > Regards, > Sean > > Sean Blanton > sean at blanton.com > On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 11:12 AM, Jim Thomason > wrote: > To be brutally honest, Perl just ain't cool like it used to be any more. So most of the "teach kids to code" things out there are probably going to be in another language - probably python, which seems to be the dominant thing nowadays. Javascript to a lesser extent. > > I think your best course of action would probably be to start with one of those courses as a framework, and just port it to use Perl as the language instead. > > That way, you're not creating a curriculum from scratch and are basing it off of something existing without trying to guess a good pace to move at. > > On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 10:43 AM, Richard Reina > wrote: > I have a 10 year old and an 11 year old. I would like them to learn a little perl and am trying to come up with a mini (30 day) perl course designed for them that will make it fun. Something like Randal Schwartz stroll thru perl from his Learning Perl book but eaiser. What I was thinking was something like the following but I run out of ideas after about 3 days. If anyone can help with more days worth of ideas I would be grateful to here your suggestions. > > Thanks > > Day 1: Create a Hello World script. > Day 2: Make hello world script ask for users name capture it and respond "Please to meet you "user". > Day 3: Ask user if they wan't to know the date and time and give it to them if they type "y". > Day 4: > Day 5 .... > > _______________________________________________ > Chicago-talk mailing list > Chicago-talk at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/chicago-talk > > > _______________________________________________ > Chicago-talk mailing list > Chicago-talk at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/chicago-talk > > _______________________________________________ > Chicago-talk mailing list > Chicago-talk at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/chicago-talk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From richard at rushlogistics.com Tue Sep 13 11:22:45 2016 From: richard at rushlogistics.com (Richard Reina) Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2016 13:22:45 -0500 Subject: [Chicago-talk] Teaching kids perl In-Reply-To: References:

Message-ID: <4FAC82DD-09DD-42F2-9FFC-ADFEFB2530A6@rushlogistics.com> > > My son wanted to program a video game, so we did a text-based Perl program that did "Choose your character; get random numbers to hit and be hit and subtract hit points and see who dies first" program. That was very easy and quick in Perl and I got a "cool" and an "I-want-to-do-more". > > This sounds really cool. Can you explain a bit more of how the game works? Haven't quite got the gist of it yet. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amead2 at alanmead.org Tue Sep 13 13:04:27 2016 From: amead2 at alanmead.org (Alan Mead) Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2016 15:04:27 -0500 Subject: [Chicago-talk] Teaching kids perl In-Reply-To: References:

Message-ID: <358b7e27-cd16-e3fd-074f-3d3063f5779c@alanmead.org> Richard, FWIW, I second Andy's suggestion that you start with a project that the kids want to do. I think that's more important than the language, although the argument for Perl (or Python etc.) is the same for BASIC; you avoid the need to teach about compilers, etc. I think having 10-year-olds debug linking errors or inheritance issues probably complicates trying to learn to code. I learned to program because I wanted to play games and the only software I had was the BASIC interpreter built into the OS. In contrast, my kids never had much interest in trying to write games because they have endless software entertainment options (all far better than they were likely to produce). One of them showed an interest in scripting to make cool things happen in Never Winter Nights. My students who have learned to program were always motivated by a specific project. I also second Andy's suggestion that web-based projects are a good fit for Perl and attractive to kids. I may yet hook my daughter with this kind of project. Another area would be phone/tablet apps. I did a very quick google search and I don't know how possible it is to use Perl to make apps. This site, for example, looks dormant: https://code.google.com/archive/p/perl-android-apk/ . Pi projects might also be a good "hook." Most of the published projects you'll find don't use Perl, but it is present by default on "Raspbian." A lot of the "Saturday afternoon 'Learn to code!' classes at the civic center" use something like Tynker.com. Or Scratch. I'm not very familiar and certainly visual coding is mainstream for applications, but in teaching statistics, I notice that my students are scared of syntax (they're fine so long as something can be accomplished using wizards and dialogs). I don't think you're "really" learning to code unless at some point you have to fire up emacs/vi or the equivalent. -Alan -- Alan D. Mead, Ph.D. President, Talent Algorithms Inc. science + technology = better workers +815.588.3846 (Office) +267.334.4143 (Mobile) http://www.alanmead.org I've... seen things you people wouldn't believe... functions on fire in a copy of Orion. I watched C-Sharp glitter in the dark near a programmable gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like Ruby... on... Rails... Time for Pi. --"The Register" user Alister, applying the famous "Blade Runner" speech to software development From sean at blanton.com Tue Sep 13 19:20:08 2016 From: sean at blanton.com (Sean Blanton) Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2016 21:20:08 -0500 Subject: [Chicago-talk] Teaching kids perl In-Reply-To: <358b7e27-cd16-e3fd-074f-3d3063f5779c@alanmead.org> References:

<358b7e27-cd16-e3fd-074f-3d3063f5779c@alanmead.org> Message-ID: Richard, I'll find the code - it's on the wife's Mac. Games were also a primary incentive for me to learn to code. My Dad, for some unknown reason, decided not to be cheap as usual, but to splurge and get an Apple II+ when all the other kids were getting Comodore 64's. I typed in the Apple BASIC games from magazines, but they always had some sprites or sounds that required you to enter hex into the 'monitor'. . Then somehow, probably the games had some assembly code, I learned 6502 assembly language. I've never reached those heights of intelligence since, I'm pretty sure. The love of games continued to push me to learn C, because the Mac game books were in C, but early mac OS graphics and memcopy routines were in PASCAL, so I learned to call PASCAL libraries from C. So I learned libraries and interfaces and differences between C and Pascal strings. (Coincidentally my first part time job in college was working in climate research and coding in C, but calling FORTRAN libs from C. Hmmm, like calling PASCAL libs from C but different, etc. etc.) Just a story, but it's great to recall how we learned coding when considering how to teach our kids. Great thread! Regards, Sean Sean Blanton sean at blanton.com On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 3:04 PM, Alan Mead wrote: > Richard, > > FWIW, I second Andy's suggestion that you start with a project that the > kids want to do. I think that's more important than the language, > although the argument for Perl (or Python etc.) is the same for BASIC; > you avoid the need to teach about compilers, etc. I think having > 10-year-olds debug linking errors or inheritance issues probably > complicates trying to learn to code. > > I learned to program because I wanted to play games and the only > software I had was the BASIC interpreter built into the OS. In > contrast, my kids never had much interest in trying to write games > because they have endless software entertainment options (all far better > than they were likely to produce). One of them showed an interest in > scripting to make cool things happen in Never Winter Nights. My students > who have learned to program were always motivated by a specific project. > > I also second Andy's suggestion that web-based projects are a good fit > for Perl and attractive to kids. I may yet hook my daughter with this > kind of project. > > Another area would be phone/tablet apps. I did a very quick google > search and I don't know how possible it is to use Perl to make apps. > This site, for example, looks dormant: > https://code.google.com/archive/p/perl-android-apk/ . > > Pi projects might also be a good "hook." Most of the published projects > you'll find don't use Perl, but it is present by default on "Raspbian." > > A lot of the "Saturday afternoon 'Learn to code!' classes at the civic > center" use something like Tynker.com. Or Scratch. I'm not very familiar > and certainly visual coding is mainstream for applications, but in > teaching statistics, I notice that my students are scared of syntax > (they're fine so long as something can be accomplished using wizards and > dialogs). I don't think you're "really" learning to code unless at some > point you have to fire up emacs/vi or the equivalent. > > -Alan > > > -- > > Alan D. Mead, Ph.D. > President, Talent Algorithms Inc. > > science + technology = better workers > > +815.588.3846 (Office) > +267.334.4143 (Mobile) > > http://www.alanmead.org > > I've... seen things you people wouldn't believe... > functions on fire in a copy of Orion. > I watched C-Sharp glitter in the dark near a programmable gate. > All those moments will be lost in time, like Ruby... on... Rails... Time > for Pi. > > --"The Register" user Alister, applying the famous > "Blade Runner" speech to software development > > _______________________________________________ > Chicago-talk mailing list > Chicago-talk at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/chicago-talk > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From madcityzen at gmail.com Wed Sep 14 21:32:59 2016 From: madcityzen at gmail.com (Doug Bell) Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2016 23:32:59 -0500 Subject: [Chicago-talk] Meeting - September 22 - Accepting Payments on the Web Message-ID: <69B6811F-B080-4277-ABD5-CCF47AAD3325@gmail.com> This month, Noel Rappin (http://www.noelrappin.com) will be talking about accepting payments on the web: > Your customers have money, and you?d like them to give it to you. Payment gateways, such as Stripe (https://stripe.com), Braintree (https://www.braintreepayments.com), and Paypal (https://paypal.com), make it easy to start charging credit cards and get the money flowing. But charging cards is only the beginning. You need to worry that your app responds gracefully to service failures, since charging a customer for a failed transaction is bad. You need to guard against fraud and security breaches. You need administrative tools that are flexible but secure. You want to test against external services. And you?ll run up against the law. Learn from some of my mistakes and build a robust financial application. Noel Rappin is the Director of Development at Table XI. Noel has authored multiple technical books, including "Rails 4 Test Prescriptions", "Trust-Driven Development", and the forthcoming "Take My Money: Accepting Payments on the Web". Follow Noel on Twitter @noelrap, and online at . RSVP for the meeting on the Chicago.PM Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/ChicagoPM/events/234000832/ Doug Bell madcityzen at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: