[K12OSN] Programming Languages

Liam Marshall lsrpm at mts.net
Thu Jul 22 15:25:34 UTC 2004


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
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