[K12OSN] Programming Languages

["Terrell Prudé, Jr."]

If I were you, I would get a hold of the folks at Yorktown High School 
in Arlington, VA.  They use Python for this purpose on LTSP, and I 
happened by there one evening during one of their LUG meetings.  I don't 
remember what the IDE used at Yorktown was called, but I remember 
programming in Visual BASIC back in the day, and their Python IDE 
reminded me a lot of VB.  Matter of fact, at the teacher's suggestion, I 
actually sat down and did some basic Python programming, and I'd never 
done Python before.  I remember thinking, hey, this is pretty easy.

--TP

Liam Marshall wrote:

> In the past years, while working with the evil empire of Microsoft, I 
> was teaching among other things, two programming classes.  One Grade 
> 11 class using the medium of Visual Basic, and one grade 12 class 
> using the medium of Java.
>
> I have managed to convince the school to let me break away from the 
> evil empire and go to linux in the lab completely.  Specifically, I am 
> using K12LTSP with thin clients.  I have 32 workstations all 
> connecting to my server now,( a bit of work but worth it compared to 
> the wiping out of workstation hard drives and reloading from scratch 
> that I do every year during the summer)
>
> I have Java workable on the workstations and am using an IDE from SUN 
> (NetBeans IDE 3.6)  it works great!
>
> Now I am looking for a replacement for Visual Basic, which will never 
> work under Linux.  It doesn't have to be Visual Basic, I was just 
> using it before because frankly, it was an easy to learn language with 
> alot of mouse work.  The operative word is EASY.  That way I could 
> focus on the concepts of programming without having to focus on 
> learning the mechanics of the programming language.  With Visual Basic 
> the mechanics comes more or less naturally.
>
> What I would like is some language usable with linux that is of a 
> similar nature.  I would prefer a language that has a nice visual 
> component (IDE, read EASY) so that the students introduction to 
> programming is not like throwing them into the deep end of the pool of 
> programming.
>
> Does such an animal exist?  And did I mention that it should be free, 
> at least for schools?  I convinced them to let me go to Linux at least 
> partially with the argument that cost was minimal, if anything.
>
> Please advice.  I appreciate all your help, in advance