/dev/chat

12:00 AM

absolutely. I'm really into the whole "teach the next generation to code" thing, so...

as am I, even if they don't go into any engineering area, knowing to code is as much about how to think critically as it is developing software

strugee

I would say even more. knowing how to create a solution to a problem (ie knowing a language) is useless if you don't know how to solve the problem

casey

@slm indeed :)

slm

0

Q: Programming environment to teach kids about programming

I'm looking for an application that would assist in teaching basic programming concepts to 4th graders (9-10 years old). Either commercial or open source would be be acceptable, and ideally it would be great if the solution ran on Linux (Ubuntu or Fedora).

Add your suggestions there

hopefully I'm using that site apprp.

casey

knowing how to program is essential. The meteorology grad program at PSU basically requires at least some programming knowledge.

strugee

12:07 AM

@FaheemMitha no, that's the beauty of free software. if the program were proprietary, you'd be stuck. but since it's free software, you can fork if you really need to.

slm

VICE

The software program VICE, standing for VersatIle Commodore Emulator, is a freeware and cross platform an emulator for Commodore's 8-bit computers, running on Amiga, Unix, MS-DOS, Win32, Mac OS X, OS/2, Acorn RISC OS, and BeOS host machines. VICE is free software, released under the GNU General Public Licence. It's also available for a variety of platforms: for instance VICE for Microsoft Windows (Win32) is known as WinVICE, the OS/2 variant is called Vice/2, and the emulator running on BeOS is called BeVICE. History As of version 2.1, released December 19, 2008, VICE emulates the Co...

casey

ah, the memories :) (or is it AHHHH! the memories...)

Timtech

Debian or Ubuntu?

casey

@Timtech Whatever the reasoning for that question, the answer is debian.

slm

@casey - and thanks to that little detour you just helped me remember the name of the window env. I used to use on my 1st 8088

GeOS/Geoworks

GEOS (16-bit operating system)

GEOS is a computer operating environment, graphical user interface, and suite of application software. Originally released as PC/GEOS, it runs on DOS-based, IBM PC compatible computers. The package later became GeoWorks Ensemble, then NewDeal Office, and is now Breadbox Ensemble. Versions for some handheld platforms were also released. PC/GEOS was first created by Berkeley Softworks, who later became GeoWorks Corporation. Version 4.0 was developed in 2001 by Breadbox Computer Company, LLC, and named Breadbox Ensemble. PC/GEOS should not be confused with the 8-bit GEOS product from...

this was driving me nuts a couple of weeks ago, b/c I could see the logo but couldn't remember the name of this stupid thing when I was writing up my bio on that meta post

I owe you for nudging that memory 8-)

strugee

12:12 AM

@casey aaaahh, the smug feeling of growing up 32-bit :P

casey

@slm now who is dating themselves? :)

slm

@casey but we all already knew that about me 8-)

time get's everyone

casey

The first PC we had at home was an ancient suitcase sized portable computer my Dad had from work.

@slm true

strugee

@FaheemMitha ask.debian.net, ask.fedora.org

whatever powers those

and some Perl or something

(for database migration)

Faheem Mitha

@strugee Free software projects die all the time. Sometimes they are valuable projects. If nobody understands how the code works, and the original devs can't be bothered to talk, this greatly increases the probability of the project dying.

The way this should work is that people enter the project and gradually take over. Of course, this requires some work on the part of the original devs in order to make this happen.

strugee

12:22 AM

true

Faheem Mitha

@strugee I doubt an automated migration into those sites would be trivial, even if anyone was inclined to take the time to try. granted, i don't know anything about the sw that powers these sites.

casey

and I fondly remember my database of BBSs I used to tie up our second phone line dialing into on my 2400 baud external Hayes AT modem.

strugee

I find free software politics fascinating.

one of the things that I find fascinating about Plan 9 is that it's simultaneously new and old

like, Ethernet is the "newfangled" way to do network connections, a serial port connection is the "failsafe" way. which is obviously a 90s kind of thing

and yet, its system networking model is unique in the entire software field

Faheem Mitha

sadly, ask.debian.net seems to be next door to dead. shame really.

that is a bona-fide community site, but it doesn't seem to have caught on.

strugee

I wonder how much bigger debian is than ask.debian

Faheem Mitha

12:29 AM

@strugee In what sense?

slm

@casey you're lucky we only had the 1 phone line

strugee

@FaheemMitha nothing in particular. new questions. questions answered. stuff like that

slm

@casey i used to dial 300 baud

had highschool friends w/ 2400/9600

fidonet wwiv

Faheem Mitha

@strugee Dunno. The debian tag here is probably more active. ask.debian.net seems to average a question every few days. i think this site gets more debian questions than that. At a quick glance, I'd say like 10 times as much, or more.

strugee

@FaheemMitha yeah, their community is in a sad state

I don't think I would feel as sacrilegious about using a proprietary web product (Stack Exchange) if it didn't depend on .NET

oh man, I just looked up Sam Hocevar, from the earlier conversation. I knew I knew his name from somewhere. he's the WTFPL dude.

Faheem Mitha

12:34 AM

@strugee Yes, it is ironical to have what are basically free software sites running on top of .NET.

strugee

@FaheemMitha I think their load balancers and stuff use Ubuntu but yeah the main platform's .NET. I love what they're doing with Discouse though

Faheem Mitha

Hocevar was DPL, but I barely recognize his name.

@strugee Discouse?

strugee

@FaheemMitha DPL?

@FaheemMitha discourse.org

Discourse is to BBS software as Stack Exchange is to Experts Exchange

Faheem Mitha

@strugee Debian Project Leader

strugee

ah

Faheem Mitha

12:38 AM

@strugee Who is "their", "they're" in these two sentences? :-)

strugee

@FaheemMitha Stack Exchange Inc.

Faheem Mitha

@strugee The Discourse thing is by them?

strugee

yep

Faheem Mitha

@strugee Ok. That wasn't obvious from the site.

strugee

yeah they talk about it on the podcast sometimes

Faheem Mitha

12:41 AM

Looks like some of the same people involved. But is SE as a corporate entity actually involved?

The entity in question seems to be Digital Ocean

slm

No discourse is Jeff by himself

he left SE

it's Jeff as leadership w/ I believe 3-4 devs

strugee

@slm is that why he stopped being on podcasts?? I didn't know that

Faheem Mitha

@slm yes, that is what it looks like to me

slm

discourse.org/about

Faheem Mitha

Back to sleep now. Take care, guys.

strugee

12:45 AM

night

slm

— Jeff Atwood and the Discourse team

He left, saying he was getting burned out

He talks about it on another podcast, I think it was on the twit FOSS podcast, i'll dig it up

strugee

also look at the copyright at the bottom

slm

codinghorror.com/blog/2013/03/why-ruby.html

strugee

the end of an era was apparently a while ago. who knew.

slm

Now I'm in trouble

-1

Q: Programming environment to teach kids about programming

I'm looking for an application that would assist in teaching basic programming concepts to 4th graders (9-10 years old). Either commercial or open source would be be acceptable, and ideally it would be great if the solution ran on Linux (Ubuntu or Fedora).

software-development educational

Faheem Mitha

12:51 AM

@slm Isn't there something called lego?

strugee

yeah I saw that. funny how Gilles is so business-y

@FaheemMitha you're either thinking of LOGO or MINDSTORMS

or EV3 (successor to MINDSTORMS)

Faheem Mitha

@strugee logo perhaps

yes, i think i had logo in mind. after a quick look at the wp page, doesn't really look suitable

slm

hanselminutes.com/406/…

Faheem Mitha

@slm is this for your kids? if so, why not just go with python?

slm

I was attempting to stub out a place for this answer, but it needs to be worked

yeah

i was looking for a variety of ways

that's the podcast w/ jeff

Faheem Mitha

12:55 AM

@strugee maybe you could comment? :-)

strugee

@slm thanks, I'll listen to it later

slm

I'll fix that Q later

strugee

@FaheemMitha I did :)

Faheem Mitha

I mean, make a suggestion. :-)

@slm actually, your question looks ok to me. maybe they are being over-aggressive because it is a new site.

"What programming concepts? How should they be taught?" I'm really not sure how I would address that.

strugee

@FaheemMitha I did.

Faheem Mitha

12:58 AM

personally i think Python would be just fine as a first programming language. on Debian, naturally.

strugee

in this here chat room

Faheem Mitha

@strugee Don't see it. Where?

strugee

1 hour ago, by strugee

@slm teach 'em LOGO. we did it for a couple years in my old school; it's a very good language for learning

Faheem Mitha

@strugee Oh, you thought of the LOGO thing too.

I completely missed that whole conversation.

but really, i'd just go with python myself. if i was in that situation.

strugee

yeah Python's a great real programming language to start with.

but personally I teach people HTML+CSS+JavaScript

Faheem Mitha

1:02 AM

@slm I upvoted. two downvotes is a bit much.

Braiam

@slm ugh!

some advice: use bullet list, is easier to parse by the people reading them

also don't be reserved, ask for cool stuff you might like the software to do...

also separate the "should/must" from the "would like"s

you may also want to read Robert answer to prevent stuff going too broad meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/a/258/226

if you had experience with anything is also good that you share it with the likes/dislikes

so people have an idea of what you are looking for and meet your needs

Braiam

1:32 AM

this should be here?

strugee

1:59 AM

you may want to move this to unix.stackexchange.com. you're probably not going to get a useful answer here. (to move, flag your own question and put a custom reason) — strugee 10 secs ago

strugee

5:28 AM

hah.

Almost a better question. Why can't we get this information from Apple? — Jess 6 hours ago

free software, always with full disclosure ftw! \o/

strugee

7:03 AM

0

Q: Arch Linux pacman -Syu breaks machine

Strange things have been going on with arch recently after I installed libreoffice. The first sign was that there were no longer any icons on my desktop. I thought this was strange so I rebooted, same thing. I tried opening chromium to google an answer but it would not open from the menu, I deci...

boot grub2 init

just voted to close this as unreproducible/typo/whatever, since OP is clearly gone and the problem was likely going to be a helpdesk deal. do people think this is OK or an abuse of the close system?

Jenny D

7:18 AM

Morning

strugee

morning

why is everyone getting up around this time? where is it morning?

Jenny D

Europe

<---is in Sweden

strugee

ah

Kiwy

9:43 AM

Hi everybody, as some of you may know I'm trying to clean some tag and add excerpt where needed, I'm really unable to figure out to what the following tag could be related to ?

administration
advanced
access-point
accounts
appearance
authorization
art

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