Reaction for: Getting Close to Objects by Matt C

Well, I didn't find this article too interesting. I think that I agree with the authors in the benefits of having the "lively" programming environment, with objects floating around under their own power and such, and think that it can play a role in teaching programming. Being able to view all objects and their connections to other objects is very helpful. I would assume that debugging becomes a lot simpler, and understanding the design of a program might be as well.

One thing that might be interesting to learn more about is the difference in visual and text-based programming environments. Maybe Shoe knows something about this from 233? What are the educational benefits of using one over the other? I found that it was sometimes frustrating when I was using a pseudo-visual environment this summer, but maybe a good implementation would be helpful.

It might also be useful to point out the difference betweent the environment that is introduced in the paper, and things where the visual aspect is building GUI's and then clicking on different parts to fill in that code. That's what I have used, and I'm not sure how much I liked it. Well, that's all for this one.


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