The goal of Go+ builder

[nighca]

Question

Which one is the goal of Go+ Builder?

• Help children to learn to code
• Help children to build games (applications)
• Help children to learn "a way to think"
• Something else

Why it matters

The answer strongly affects how we build Go+ Builder, especially the code-editor. Related issues:

• CodeEditor UI Optimization #499
• Code editor optimizaiton #495

If the answer is the 3rd one (help children to learn "a way to think"). The next question is: what is "the way to think"?

References

Details

• https://www.ted.com/talks/mitch_resnick_let_s_teach_kids_to_code

  • Learn to Code, Code to Learn
  • Write (with) new technologies instead of read new technologies
  • Strategies for solving problems, designing projects, and communicating ideas
  • A way to express oneself

• https://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_dohmke_with_ai_anyone_can_be_a_coder_now

• https://www.codemonkey.com/blog/category/about-codemonkey/

  • Computational thinking
  • Programming skills
  • Executive functioning skills, such as problem solving, planning and mathematical thinking

• Computational Thinking

  • Algorithm
  • Data
  • Simulation

• Computational Thinking

  • decomposition: breaking down a complex problem or system into smaller, more manageable parts
  • pattern recognition / data representation: looking for similarities among and within problems
  • abstraction / generalization: focusing on the important information only, ignoring irrelevant detail
  • algorithms: developing a step-by-step solution to the problem, or the rules to follow to solve the problem

Conclusion

We can take this as a temporary answer:

Go+ Builder's goal is to help children to learn "ability to build". The approach is providing a tool to help children build their own games. Content of "ability to build" includes:

• Ability to understand a complex system
• Ability to build architecture of a complex system (TODO)
• Specific set of abilities to solve problems, known as "computational thinking" (ses details in references)

Derived conclusions

• We do not care much about drawing, UI designing, or self expressing, so we are not planning to provide drawing board like Scratch
• The efficiency or simplicity (of making a game) is not the most important. They matter when they do help with or do prevent learning "ability to build"
• Code to learn, not learn to code