r programming notes needed anyone have
Answers
Explanation:
This is the main text of a funding proposal that we sent to DARPA in January 1999. In August 1999, we submitted a revised version of the proposal.
Please look at the EDU-SIG home page (Python in Education Special Interest Group). This is where the current project status is described and/or will be discussed, and where you'll find pointers to more resources.
Note:I have made one change to the text of the proposal: At the request of some supporters of other languages, I've withdrawn a language comparison chart that contained highly personal and sometimes unfounded opinions of other languages. The table was being used out of context in a way that some found objectionable. (Not all of the table is disputed, but it seems wiser not to engage in direct language comparisons without a lot more documentation.)
Innovative Claims
In the seventies, Xerox PARC asked itself: "Can we have a computer on every desk?" By the middle of the nineties, this question was answered affirmatively. But all those computers haven't necessarily empowered their users. Today's computers are often inflexible: the average computer user can often only change a limited set of options configurable via a "wizard" (a lofty word for a canned dialog), and is dependent on expert programmers for everything else.
We now ask ourselves a follow-up question: "What would the world look like if users could program their own computer?" We're looking forward to a future where every computer user will be able to "open the hood" of their computer and make improvements to the applications inside. We believe that this will eventually change the nature of software and software development tools fundamentally.
We compare mass ability to write and modify software with mass literacy, and expect that equally fundamental changes to society may ensue. Since hardware is now sufficiently fast and cheap to make mass computer education possible, we believe that the ability for the average computer user to create and modify software (rather than just installing and using it) will enable the next big change-and we consider it our next challenge.
The open source movement claims that peer review of software by thousands can greatly improve the quality of software. The success of an operating system like Linux indicates that there is value to this claim. We believe that the next step, having millions of programmers, will cause a change of a different quality-the abundant availability of personalized software.
The tools needed for this new way to look at programming will be different than the tools currently available to professional programmers. We intend to greatly improve both the training material and the development tools available. As an example, non-professional programmers should not have to fear that a small mistake might destroy their work or render their computer unusable.
The following factors will affect the success of our project:
Programming language
Development tools
Training materials
Community building
For practical reasons, we propose to use an existing programming language. The design and implementation of a new language can take several years, and we have picked one that is good enough to start working on the other three points. Our choice is Python, an advanced scripting and prototyping language. There is enough (anecdotal) evidence that Python is easy to learn for people who are (nearly) computer-illiterate. There are currently no development tools or training materials for Python that suit such an audience. We will make development of these the main focus of our task. We want to foster a community specifically focused on our tools and materials, so we can collect the necessary feedback; there is already interest in the use of Python by "newbies" in the existing Python community (estimated at 20,000 programmers, and growing rapidly), so we expect that it will be a fertile deployment ground.