[Lazarus] Graeme would love this, or not, I think

[Paul Breneman]

On 10/20/2013 07:07 AM, Paul Breneman wrote:
> On 10/20/2013 05:22 AM, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote:
>> Marco van de Voort schrieb:
>>> On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 12:25:25AM +0200, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote:
>>>> For writing programs you need some editor and an compiler/linker,
>>>> e.g. a Lazarus IDE which runs on a variety of systems. Then students
>>>> can learn how to use a console (window) for program I/O in about 1
>>>> hour, sufficient for the following introduction and practice in "The
>>>> Art of Computer Programming" [Knuth].
>>>
>>> Either your students were different, or that is very optimistic :)
>>
>> Yes, I was thinking of IT students. Sorry for that :-(
>>
>>> In this class, all this simply ate too much time, and even after
>>> students
>>> were ackward with it. And it was only 9 x 1.5 hr, then an hour is
>>> still too
>>> much.
>>
>> Then a good ole homecomputer (C64 emulator...) would be more useful ;-)
>>
>>
>>>> Creating and using a GUI can become a detached course, covering both
>>>> the general GUI design principles and how to master event driven
>>>> applications.
>>>
>>> My point was that TP was too alien, and the tricks to keep it running
>>> prevented it for students to run it on their own laptop.
>>
>> ACK
>>
>>> Delphi on the other hand invited too much play.
>>
>> This energy could be used in extra (voluntary) courses, where the
>> interested can learn more about using Delphi.
>>
>>> The ideal usage IMHO would be a stripped lazarus/Delphi without
>>> designer,
>>> and some skeleton application under "new" that instantiates a skeleton
>>> GUI
>>> app (delivered in .ppu), and the students can use procedures from their
>>> programs to use the skeleton units.
>>
>> In your timeframe (9*1.5 hrs) I wouldn't address GUI programs at all.
>
> Almost 6 years ago I started this educational project:
>    http://www.turbocontrol.com/monitor.htm
>
> Several times I've used it to introduce people to programming.  I
> usually start by downloading a small zip file from here:
>    http://www.turbocontrol.com/helloworld.htm
>
> After we compile and run the program I next show them the (few) files
> involved and try to give them a picture of how the source is changed
> into the executable.
>
> What I'd like to have is a very simple IDE to go to next.  So a
> "stripped Lazarus" as mentioned above might be good.  Graeme (the fellow
> in the subject) has an IDE started with fpGUI that might (eventually)
> work too.  You can quickly see an earlier version of that IDE using a
> zip from this page:
>    http://www.turbocontrol.com/easyfpgui.htm

Last year I bought ten kits similar to this:
   http://www.parallax.com/product/90005
Those are my favorite way to introduce programming, by blinking a single 
LED on and off every second.

On that page you can download the PDF for the book, and also the editor 
software (it used to be written with Delphi or C++ Builder).