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Learnable Programming (2012)

Here's a trick question: How do we get people to understand programming? Khan Academy recently launched an online environment for learning to program. It offers a set of tutorials based on the JavaScript and Processing languages, and features a "live coding" environment, where the program's output updates as the programmer types.

I am happy to be composing this essay in a text editor, where my words become visible and editable as soon as I think of them, as opposed to working entirely internally like the orators and playwrights of the distant past. In his influential essay No Silver Bullet, Fred Brooks makes the case that software is inherently "invisible and unvisualizable", and points out the universal failure of so-called "visual programming" environments. This essay was an immune response, triggered by hearing too many times that Inventing on Principle was "about live coding", and seeing too many attempts to "teach programming" by adorning a JavaScript editor with badges and mascots.

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