F-script for novice (no programming experience)?

[jrv]

My grandson (at 12) is a veteran gamer and is Mac literate. I think
he would pick up F-script quickly, then go on to writing programs for
OS X and iPhone with little trouble.

The problem is, all the introductory F-Script things I find are
addressed to experienced programmers, particularly those already
writing Cocoa programs.

Is there a tutorial for people with no programming experience? No
talking down to (or anything childish) is wanted, and I'm sure would
be a turnoff. Just something step by step without much jargon, and
without much theory (what is an object....). Smart young people will
go for the theory later once they get interested in the results. Or
would someone be willing to write such a thing?

Is there any other interest in this sort of tutorial? I can't take it
on myself right now, but would help if someone want's to get it
started? I don't think there is a lot of writing to do, but there
is a lot of thought involved it getting it right.

Best,

John Velman

[Karsten]

Hi John,

I think if you want to get started with Cocoa and F-Script you might
try a Tutorial on Smalltalk to understand the language and then get
started with some cocoa to get to know the framework. If he doesn't
know the concepts of object oriented programming, he might not be able
to really understand the ideas used in the cocoa framework.

Kind Regards
Karsten

[John Velman]

Karsten,

Thanks for your response. Two problems:

1) Most, if not all, the Smalltalk tutorials I've run across start with
something like the gnu-smalltalk tutorial: "This manual assumes that the
reader is acquainted with the basics of computer science, and has
reasonable proficiency with a procedural language such as C." Or --
Smalltalk for Java programmers, or...

2) There seem to be no free Smalltalk implementations (except F-script ?)
that are integrated with OS X. Don't want to have to use X11, GTK, or
whatever.

Finally, I think you are mistaken about needing to know the concepts of
object oriented programming first. This is a must for someone already
steeped in C or (gasp, Fortran). But, to cite Stephen Kochan from
"Programming in Objective-C 2.0", "I decided neither to teach C first nor
to assume prior knowledge...I decided to take the unconventional approach
of teaching Objective-C ... from an object-oriented programming
perspective." "In fact, if you're a novice programmer , you should be able
to learn Objective-C as your first programming language."

Seems to me F-Script could well serve this purpose with the right
introduction. I don't think the object oriented concepts are difficult in
and of themselves. It's a question of phrasing and phasing the explanation
and examples (exercises).

Best regards,

John V.

[Philippe Mougin]

There is no such tutorial for F-Script, unfortunately.

There is a lot of literature on Smalltalk out there (for a good start
see Prof. Stephane Ducasse free Smalltalk book Web site at
http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks.html). Some is targeted at
complete beginners, and even specifically at children. See "Squeak:
Learn Programming with Robot" at http://scg.unibe.ch/wiki/botsinc/.

Adapting such a book to F-Script could be nice idea.

Philippe

[Philippe Mougin]

btw, using Smalltalk (be it F-Script or another dialect) to learn
programming is really, really a good idea. Lisp would also qualify.
In my experience, it is by far the most productive way to learn
programming and gives students great programming skills as well as a
deep understanding of important programming concepts and a meaningful
and critical perspective on the subject of programming languages in
general.

Philippe

On 26 oct, 19:37, jrv <vel...@cox.net> wrote:

[John Velman]

Thanks, Phillipe, I'll have a look.

John V.

[Serge Stinckwich]

I like the idea to have a "F-Script by example" book based on "Pharo
by example" : http://www.pharobyexample.org/

On 27 oct, 04:56, Philippe Mougin <pmou...@acm.org> wrote:
> There is no such tutorial for F-Script, unfortunately.
>
> There is a lot of literature on Smalltalk out there (for a good start

> see Prof. Stephane Ducasse free Smalltalk book Web site athttp://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks.html). Some is targeted at

> complete beginners, and even specifically at children. See "Squeak:

> Learn Programming with Robot" athttp://scg.unibe.ch/wiki/botsinc/.

[John Velman]

Thanks for the suggestion, Serge. I've downloaded “Pharo by Example” and
had a quick look. I'm becoming somewhat interested in this as a project,
but considering that it's taken me a couple of weeks to write a short
tutorial on how I made a Cocoa program with a Haskell component, I'm not
very sanguine about my capacity to carry it through.

Best,

John V.