Looking for interactive programming with simple graphics like old CoCo BASIC or turbo pascal
 

On 08/13/2012 09:32 AM, Joel Rees wrote:

I'm trying to show my son how to use his computer to help him solve
his high school math. He's in his second year at an
engineering/technology prep high school here in the Kansai area of
Japan and has trouble seeing the reasons for the methods of solution
they are trying to teach him by rote.

heh.

Anyway, what I'm looking for is something that will allow him to loop
through the equations and watch the results. Numbers are easy, of
course. Perl (his only language so far) gets us that far.

He enjoyed playing with the graphical equation solver on the old Mac.
Maybe it spoiled him. But he would get a lot more motivated, I think,
if he could plot the numbers, watch the equation step through and plot
the numbers in 2D on a window on the screen like you could do with the
old BASIC+graphics commands or Turbo Pascal.

Logo is too abstract.

Sugar's Pippy activity looks possible, but how well does Sugar run on
Squeeze? Is Pippy useable?

Any other suggestions?

Does TLC+TK have some simple mode that can do equation-like stuff?
Python or Haskell, or whatever, with some graphics package that
doesn't take too much code just to get a graphical window up?

--
Joel Rees



Turbo Pascal will run under Wine, and so will George Washington (GW) BASIC,
which is identical to Microsoft BASIC. I don't know how to get real graphics
with GW BASIC. I'm not familiar with COCO BASIC. EUREKA will also run
under Wine. Both Turbo and Eureka were Borland products, and neither
has been made in at least 15 years. The imitation EUREKA, Mercury, was
written by the same fellow who wrote EUREKA, but was never properly
debugged, so I don't recommend it, even tho it was free, and might be
available somewhere. EUREKA is very helpful, altho I don't know if it
has any graphical output. I do know that GIGO, so you have to be careful
what you feed it.

For a modern computer program that is not too difficult to learn, try
Python, which is free, as is the instruction manual. Note that there are
two versions in common use, and version 3.0 is not compatible with
earlier versions, so be careful what you download as to software and
instructions. Fo instructions, there is a good tutorial called "Snake
Wrangling
for Kids" by Jason R. Briggs--also available in two versions. In spite
of the
title, it's not just for kids, and it's pretty thorough. Both Turbo and
Python

are modern-style languages that will make the programmer avoid the
"spaghetti code" that BAIC writers frequently fall into.

--doug

--
Blessed are the peacekeepers...for they shall be shot at from both sides. --A.M. Greeley


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