Re: Blind Programming, Workshop 1, Narrated Video

  • From: Andreas Stefik <stefika@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2010 09:27:05 -0500

An excellent question!

The short answer is, yes, we do. First, while Hop is a language
designed to be easy to use (explored in formal studies), it is also a
legit programming language that works like any other. As such, while
Hop isn't quite commercially scalable quite yet, we are working hard
on optimization issues to make it so. For example, I just finished the
first round of debugger optimizations for Hop. The new debugger
architecture in Sodbeans 1.5 (released hopefully in december), is
57,261% faster than the 1.0 release so far, and it's only getting
better.

Second, the tools we've created are integrated into NetBeans 6.9,
which is a standard programming environment and includes lots of other
languages the students can play with and learn, without having to
change tools or environments. Now, in practice, Java, Python, or other
NetBeans supported languages, don't have talking debuggers, and they
certainly don't connect easily to a screen reader, but what we would
really like to do is get talking debuggers ready for other languages
as well, so that kids can transition more easily, and so that
professionals have better audio environments available for
professional level work as well. With that said, creating a talking
debugger for every language would definitely require collaboration
with a number of other groups and industry. It's also pretty
difficult, as not all languages are open source or are easily
modifiable, and just from the natural complexity of writing debuggers,
which is pretty brain bending at times.

So yaa, that's the basic plan. You asked a great question, and this
transfer effect idea, as it is called, has been very important to our
research team.

Stefik

On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 9:02 AM, Jared Wright <wright.jaredm@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I'm curious, do you have some ideas  in place for helping students who learn
> Hop transition to more mainstream programming languages? I'm real excited
> about the accessible  Netbeans environment and understand  the  reasoning
> behind making the language's terminology more intuitive to nonprogrammers.
> But a nonprogrammer after learning Hop is, by definition, no longer a
> nonprogrammer, and if they want to progress to anything more widely used
> they'll need to learn "do", "while",  and "for" anyway.
> On 09/03/2010 09:52 AM, Andreas Stefik wrote:
>>
>> Tyler is correct, we built a custom compiler, debugger, and audio
>> architecture to support the kids called Hop. We talk about it very
>> briefly in the video, but we've been running a bunch of studies on the
>> syntax and semantics to ensure it easy to use, one of which is coming
>> out soon in the Software Quality Journal from Springer. There are
>> ideas in the language borrowed from a number of languages, including
>> Python, Ruby, Java, and many other features that we have, sometimes
>> accidentally, found in studies.
>>
>> If you are curious about the details of the language, here is a link
>> to the documentation:
>>
>> https://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/sodbeans/wiki/Hop
>>
>> Stefik
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 8:36 AM, Littlefield, Tyler<tyler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I believe it's a custom language of sorts they set up, unless I'm
>>> thinking
>>> about a different project.
>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alex Midence"<alex.midence@xxxxxxxxx>
>>> To:<programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>> Sent: Friday, September 03, 2010 7:35 AM
>>> Subject: Re: Blind Programming, Workshop 1, Narrated Video
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Good morning, Andreas,
>>>>
>>>> What programming language does your workshop use to introduce the
>>>> subject?  I remember you mentioning that it was something pretty easy
>>>> to learn but don't remember if it was Python or Ruby or something like
>>>> that.
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>> Alex M
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 9/2/10, Andreas Stefik<stefika@xxxxxxxxx>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Hello all,
>>>>>
>>>>> Our team here has finished an aurally narrated, closed captioned,
>>>>> video of the first year of our summer workshop on blind computer
>>>>> programming, that we recently completed out at the Washington State
>>>>> School for the Blind. Thanks again to all those who made this
>>>>> possible, and please enjoy:
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v93or1v6xCk
>>>>>
>>>>> Stefik
>>>>> __________
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>>>>
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