From: jon@hackcraft.net
Date: Thu Dec 11 2003 - 13:02:43 EST
> Beginners, even young children, can be taught simple programming and
> string handling without knowing anything about bits and bytes, certainly
> without having to know whether the e acute they just typed is stored as
> one byte or two. Just as people can and do learn to drive cars without
> knowing anything about the nuts and bolts or how the engine works.
I really don't agree here.
Beginners, even young children, can get the concept of characters being mapped
to numbers. Certainly those young children that will thrive on programming will
have a fascination with this process in and off itself (it's just like the kids-
in-treehuts type cryptography such kids often like).
When I was 9 I thought the ASCII code table was one of the most beautiful
things in the world! Chapter 16 of Unicode4.0 would have made me ecstatic then
(hey, it comes close now). I think the resistance of some programmers to using
more than 8 bits for a character is due to them not wanting to let go of
something they grew up with rather than concern over efficiency or simplicity.
Okay, so I'm a nerd (if chapter 16 makes you think of the opening scenes of
_The Matrix_ you might be a nerd, if the opening scenes of _The Matrix_ makes
you think of chapter 16 you definitely are) and my own experiences only count
for so much, but I don't think characters -> numbers -> bytes -> bits is
particularly difficult as programming concepts go, or even é <=> e + ´ when
compared to many higher-level string handling activities (regular expressions,
bidirectional over-riding, and the subtler points of case operations).
Even so, I think it's making those two levels meet that is the biggest
stumbling block for beginners.
-- Jon Hanna | Toys and books <http://www.hackcraft.net/> | for hospitals: | <http://santa.boards.ie>
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