BYOND education in BYOND Discussion

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ID:135349
 
Sep 24 2004, 8:47 am
Thread [link] made me revisit an idea I've had for a while, which is to use BYOND as a "transition platform" for more general programming languages. I've long believed that programming (well, interesting programming, at least) involves learning concepts and design principles far more than it does language syntax. In this regard, languages are pretty much the same-- if you are a good DM programmer you can become a good Java programmer, and so forth. Clearly this is a bit simplistic (I'm a pretty good C++ coder but Perl reads like Latin to me :), but I do believe that one can learn the wonderful nuances of abstract thinking via any well-structured langauge. Hopefully DM qualifies!

The point of this post is that I'd like to encourage BYOND to be used more officially in educational settings. I think it is a very good language for this sort of thing because it is high-level enough to pick up and get quick results, but low-level enough to mirror "real" languages. If any of you are enrolled in computer classes in high-school, I'd encourage you to show them BYOND and see if they'd be amenable to "test-driving" it for this purpose. If they are interested, have them get in touch with me at tom@dantom.com and I'll assist in any way possible.
#1 Sep 24 2004, 10:11 am
1: Ungh, "coder". 2: That's exactly what I'm doing. I actually made a program that would make some random maths problems that my maths teacher uses. She simply turns on BYOND, opens the project, hits a verb and then copy+pastes the problems in an orginized way in Microsoft Word. Then printing it out and giving the class an excersize. Though, what she doesn't know is that I have the formulas to figure out all the answers in a program. I also got involved in my Integrade Tech class with BYOND, I try to involve it everywhere. I also bring people in BYOND, people I know. =)
#2 Sep 24 2004, 10:49 am
In response to Crashed (#1)
Noun: coder k'owdur
1. A person who designs and writes and tests computer programs
#3 Sep 24 2004, 10:51 am
This sounds like a novel idea, but the only problem is that some schools(like mine) get stuck on HTML. I am in E-Commerce II and people are still struggling with Basic HTML like tables. It is rather annoying that my education suffers because others are not on the same level as me, but I suppose that is the result of a free education given my the government. "You get what you pay for." comes to mind.
#4 Sep 24 2004, 11:26 am
In response to Scoobert (#3)
I dropped my ICT Shortcourse GCSE through boredom ("Turn your PC on by pressing the 'On' button") and the fact it took too much of my time up(that I could spend learning DM).

Now they force me into an ICT lesson to fill up my timetable (after I finished a short course GCSE, but you couldn't care less about my life story), and I showed my ICT teacher the DM code I had printed off (the source code to the thread I started on "Creations")...and he walked off in a huff.
I don't think schools have the teachers available to to teach Byond- I'm the only one in my school who can code DM, and I'm the only person who told a few of my friends about it.
I doubt I could teach my school/teachers how to code DM, and they are far too important to read "tutorials" done by some far off internet fool in America somewhere.

Ahem.
I just don't think it could work- althoug Byond is perfectly suited to it, it's a beautiful coding language, I love it- and this was my first programming language I actually learnt (HTML, while not exactly a programming language, I learnt after DM)- but there's not the staff nor members to teach it.
#5 Sep 24 2004, 12:35 pm
In response to Foomer (#2)
I didn't ask for a definition. Look up "ungh", buddy.
#6 Sep 24 2004, 1:22 pm
In response to Crashed (#5)
Crashed wrote:
I didn't ask for a definition. Look up "ungh", buddy.

No such word.
#7 Sep 24 2004, 1:42 pm
In response to Foomer (#6)
That's the beauty of it, I made it up (Well, someone made it up, but it has no definition. So the real definition in the sentence would be one I made up, right?).
#8 Sep 24 2004, 2:33 pm (Edited on Sep 24 2004, 2:48 pm)
I'd love it if my school would instead teach using a language like DM. At the moment, all levels of CS are basically "learn to use Visual Basic", which sucks.

[Edit]
I'll try asking next week, but I don't expect much more than a teacher installing BYOND and trying it out. I'm guessing that they might have a problem with BYOND's integrated pager. Students would spend too much time just paging each other, or playing games.
#9 Sep 24 2004, 2:54 pm
I agree, I remember you talking about it before and thinking it would be pretty neat; and I still think it would.

We already have most of the material we need to teach DM to students on the site, so I don't see any reason to not at least try =D.
#10 Sep 24 2004, 3:35 pm
I always thought this would be a great thing to teach in school.

Our school is so paranoid about viruses though that i doubt they'd even consider it.
#11 Sep 24 2004, 3:38 pm
In response to Crashed (#7)
Actually Lummox has been using it for some time. "No put usr in proc. Ungh." would suggest that using usr in procs is bad. Just as "Ungh, coder" would suggest that using "coder" is bad. I'm just pointing out that "coder" is a perfectly valid word and there's nothing to "ungh" about it.
#12 Sep 24 2004, 3:38 pm
In response to Kunark (#10)
Kunark wrote:
I always thought this would be a great thing to teach in school.

Our school is so paranoid about viruses though that i doubt they'd even consider it.

How could viruses be a problem? If you're not runnning in trusted mode, BYOND asks before it lets the running program do anything possibly stupid/bad. It's better than other languages in that regard.
#13 Sep 24 2004, 3:53 pm
In response to Jon88 (#12)
I don't know...I don't want some idiot teacher trying to stop the kind of games we make just so it'll fit in with the school's policy.
#14 Sep 24 2004, 3:56 pm
In response to Kholint (#13)
Would they let you make those kind of games in any other language?
#15 Sep 24 2004, 4:37 pm
In response to Foomer (#14)
...Ahm...Your answer is enigmatic to me.
What I mean, is that I wouldn't want a teacher from some school in America somewhere (I'm British) telling *me*, the non-school DM-coder, to stop doing that or stop doing this, so the school won't be liable for it's kids getting in trouble.
Yeah, yeah, I know- Internet is free speech, etc.

I suppose I just wanted to tell people about my problem with authority.
#16 Sep 24 2004, 4:59 pm (Edited on Sep 8 2005, 2:11 pm)
In response to Kholint (#15)
Kholint wrote:
...Ahm...Your answer is enigmatic to me.
What I mean, is that I wouldn't want a teacher from some school in America somewhere (I'm British) telling *me*, the non-school DM-coder, to stop doing that or stop doing this, so the school won't be liable for it's kids getting in trouble.
Yeah, yeah, I know- Internet is free speech, etc.

I suppose I just wanted to tell people about my problem with authority.

How COULD some teacher from some school in America somewhere tell you what to do? Tom's talking about using BYOND in CS classes.
#17 Sep 24 2004, 5:28 pm
In response to Foomer (#11)
Wrong. In my case, it means "Me no like".
#18 Sep 24 2004, 6:46 pm
I had a hard enough time convincing my teacher to let me use C++ instead of Java. I'd love to be able to use DM at school, but I somehow doubt that he'd let me.

He doesn't actually mark our assignments, because he CAN'T; he doesn't know how to program. In any language. He's supposed to be teaching the more advanced Java class, and yet the Visual Basic teacher is FAR better than him. She actually knows how to program, and how to teach programming. Sigh. At least she's the head of IT, rather than him. =)

Anyway... I'll bring it up with her next term (holidays now, hooray) and see what she thinks. You never know, it could happen.

Something like a promotional pack for schools - with an informational booklet, and the program, and the Blue Book, and perhaps a few choice tutorials or BYONDscape articles - would work wonders. They could then take it home, install it on their computers, play around, read the Blue Book... they'd get much more exposure to it that way.
#19 Sep 24 2004, 9:08 pm
In response to Jon88 (#12)
Not to mention the games already available would probably be a huge class distraction, and the teachers would consider them a "download risk".

Also, it isn't my parania, it's theirs'.
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