Wouldn’t an ASCII cellular automaton in javascript be the simplest starting point to teach/learn programming?
12th February 2012
My answer to Wouldn’t an ASCII cellular automaton in javascript be the simplest starting point to teach/learn programming? on Quora
Absolutely not. The first step in learning to program is understanding that a computer can be quickly made to do something useful by executing lines of code. Personally I’m a big fan of firing up something with an interactive prompt (like Python, or even Firebug or the Google Chrome JS console) and demonstrating that typing a line of code hitting return will get a useful response.
More recent articles
- Putting Gemini 2.5 Pro through its paces - 25th March 2025
- New audio models from OpenAI, but how much can we rely on them? - 20th March 2025
- Calling a wrap on my weeknotes - 20th March 2025