'Madeup' Computer Language Teaches Kids to Design 3D Printable Objects

[Brian_Krassenstein]

The Madeup team, headed by educator Chris Johnson of Wisconsin, has launched a Kickstarter campaign to help them raise an additional $2500 to smooth out some of the rough edges in their computer programming product for kids. Called Madeup, kids learn how to write programming language for creating 3D shapes, and then they have the reward of 3D printing them. Check out details about Madeup and its Kickstarter aspirations in the full article: http://3dprint.com/53197/kickstarter-madeup-language/


Below is a rendering, created via Madeup, of a vase generated by revolving its cross-section around the Y-axis:

[Wolfie]

Part of me says "Good for them". Part of me says "What are you thinking?".

I think that teaching kids to program and then translating that into a tactile object is a real learning tool. But... Its like teaching them to speak Iconian instead of English. Sure, sounds cool, but where in the real world are they going to use it? They certainly are not going to go out and get a job based on a resume that says they can program in Madeup.

To be honest, teaching them a more mainstream programming syntax such as Java, C, Python or Basic would serve them far better in the real world. Those languages are employable and marketable. Madeup is not and will not be. Instead, I think it would be far more productive in the long term for them to write a 3D app that responds to a more mainstream language than working on an app that understands a new language nobody else supports or understands.

[twodee]

Part of me says "Good for them". Part of me says "What are you thinking?".

I think that teaching kids to program and then translating that into a tactile object is a real learning tool. But... Its like teaching them to speak Iconian instead of English. Sure, sounds cool, but where in the real world are they going to use it? They certainly are not going to go out and get a job based on a resume that says they can program in Madeup.

To be honest, teaching them a more mainstream programming syntax such as Java, C, Python or Basic would serve them far better in the real world. Those languages are employable and marketable. Madeup is not and will not be. Instead, I think it would be far more productive in the long term for them to write a 3D app that responds to a more mainstream language than working on an app that understands a new language nobody else supports or understands.

Hi, I'm Chris, the Kickstarter project creator. I offer a couple of points in response to your statement:

• Most introductory programming courses are taught in Java, C, Python, or Basic, but only about 66% across the globe make it through their first programming course.
• I just saw the results of a study done with BlueJ, a Java learning platform, that indicates that while syntax issues are frequent amongst new programmers, they are also the most quickly fixed.

In my 10 years of teaching, I've found algorithmic thinking to be the far more challenging issue for new learners. We are abstract thinkers, and slowing our mental processes down to the point that we can feed the steps into a machine is where I want to spend my time.

Madeup is an imperative language like all these others you mention, and the differences are superficial. The ideas of loops, conditional statements, functions, and arrays are not syntactic ideas; they easily transfer from one language to another.

I could have written a library for one of these languages, but by moving into a context where I am always thinking about space and nothing but space, I can better keep my mind on the algorithm instead of the packaging of the code. The benefits of domain specific languages are hard to deny.

Also, in the realm of spoken languages, it has been found that one year of Esperanto learning and three years of French learning produces better French speakers than four years of French learning.

[truly_bent]

As of today, it looks as if you'll be meeting your $4000 stretch goal to write Madeup as a desktop app. Will you be releasing this desktop version to the open source community? If your intentions are altruistic, as it sounds, one might expect to see that.

[curious aardvark]

I'm with chris - it doesn't really matter which programming language you learn - it's the actual thought processes behind progamming that are important.

To be able to produce effective algorithyms and work out how things can be done are the main skils.

So to start on a simple language that can produce real tactile results is actually a good idea.

[twodee]

As of today, it looks as if you'll be meeting your $4000 stretch goal to write Madeup as a desktop app. Will you be releasing this desktop version to the open source community? If your intentions are altruistic, as it sounds, one might expect to see that.

I'm not convinced we'll meet the stretch goal. Things have slowed down.

Regarding Madeup's open source status, I posted this FAQ:

Will Madeup be an open source project?
Yes. We benefited greatly from many open source projects in building this (the ACE text editor, THREE.js, vim, Linux, Apache, PHP, g++, ANTLR, the OpenJDK, git, Firefox, and Chrome). It seems fitting that this project also be open source. As part of the public release in early 2016, the entire source code behind Madeup (the interface, interpreter, and model generating code) will be released on GitHub.

[Wolfie]

Just curious, whats your target age group for the $500 level? And how many students define a "group"?

[twodee]

Just curious, whats your target age group for the $500 level? And how many students define a "group"?

I've had meaningful workshops with middle and high schoolers and college students. We tend not to be able to do as much math with middle schoolers, but they comprehend variables, functions, and standard arithmetic without much trouble. It's my hope that by next summer we'll also have a blocks interface to reduce some of the syntax and recall concerns of a text interface.

How large a group did you have in mind? Your question has me picturing my school bus driver trying to manage 65 elementary and middle schoolers.

[Wolfie]

The questions were more meant to make you look at the outline of the project tiers more than obtain an actual answer What if someone shows up with the entire first grade of a elementary school, say 200 6yr olds? It was just a suggestion that you might want to spell out how many is in a group for $500 and what ages the groups are appropriate for.

As for the block interface, its a good idea. Lego used it with their first Mindstorm computer (maybe later ones too, dunno, only ever owned the first one) and it seemed to work very well. Its an easy representation of logic steps and kids old enough to play Minecraft and create some of the redstone devices they do out of very basic components surely could grasp the block nature of coding as well. And this concept leads into flow-charting and OOP in higher languages so its not a loss.

Oh, and congrats on making your first goal! Looks you are in striking distance of the $4k. Get out there and drum up the support!

[Wolfie]

Congratulations!

Successfully raised $4,446 USD with 95 backers