Topic: A programming language for children
Speaker: Mary Rose Cook
Location: Co-Up, Level 3, Adalbertstr. 7-8, Berlin-Kreuzberg (map)
Date: Sunday, October 7th, 2012
Time: 8pm - 10:30 pm
A child starts learning to read and write at age 5. Why can’t they start learning to program then, too? I am making Isla, a first programming language for young children. The accompanying environment is called Storytime and lets a child use Isla to write text adventures.
I’ll describe the Isla compiler and how I implemented the lexer, parser and interpreter. I’ll describe the design of the Isla grammar. Why is there no punctuation? Why are expressions like sentences? How did I enable array and object assignments, function calls, conditionals and logical rules in baby talk? (text pulled from our friends at JSConf).
For more on Mary Rose Cook, please visit her personal blog.
