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.
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