Hi Mark 

have you a reference for a book you read on Boxer?
What is the new one about?


> Resent-date: Thu, 08 Jun 2000 16:44:27 +0000
> Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2000 12:30:15 -0400
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> From: Mark Guzdial <guzdial at cc.gatech.edu>
> Subject: Menu Items as Statements (was Re: About the new syntax)
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> 
> (Before I ask my question, I gotta say: "WOW!  The new syntax looks 
> SO interesting!  Very inviting!  And the fact that I can switch 
> back-and-forth makes for a terrific way of moving scaffolding 
> in-and-out!)
> 
> >
> >    Now, I should confess that I have thought for many years that menu
> >items SHOULD generally be actual statements in the programming language,
> >because of the beautiful bridging that is possible. In fact, I would like
> >to derive object-specific menus as filterings of their class interface ....
> >This was done once at PARC as one of the first uses of MVC, and was quite
> >compelling (again, to me at least).
> >     To me this means that a "language for most" should be as much for
> >READING as it is for WRITING.
> >     But learning programming is partially about the UI for it, and as
> >Andreas Raab has pointed out, the syntax of the language is definitely part
> >of the UI, and should be treated with the same respect that eventually has
> >to be given to the UI.
> 
> Alan, as you well know, these are the kinds of arguments that Andy 
> diSessa has been making about Boxer for many years.  Andy has been 
> working toward the dream of defining and supporting "computational 
> literacy."  (I'm reading Andy's new book these days, which has been 
> keeping Boxer forward in my thinking lately.)
> 
> Boxer has Logo's syntax, with the exception that "blocks" (defined in 
> Logo with [square brackets] as in Smalltalk) are graphical "boxes" on 
> the screen.  Menu's in Boxer are literally just Boxer statements that 
> you can click on to execute them -- literally, boxes, blocks, and 
> menus are all the same things.
> 
> Do you see Squeak moving toward a Boxer-like mixture of graphical 
> elements plus textual elements, in order to realize this vision of 
> bridging between UI and programming?
> 
> Mark
> 
> --------------------------
> Mark Guzdial : Georgia Tech : College of Computing : Atlanta, GA 30332-0280
> Associate Professor - Learning Sciences & Technologies.
> Collaborative Software Lab - http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/csl/
> (404) 894-5618 : Fax (404) 894-0673 : guzdial at cc.gatech.edu
> http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Faculty/Mark.Guzdial.html
> 

Stephane DUCASSE (ducasse at iam.unibe.ch) http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/
"if you knew today was your last day on earth, what would you do 
different? ... especially if, by doing something different, today 
might not be your last day on earth" Calvin&Hobbes

University of Bern, Institut fuer informatik and Mathematik
IAM-SCG, 10 neubruckstrasse, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland.