73 • Moving Beyond Syntax: Lessons from 20 Years of Blocks Programming in AgentSheets by Alexander Repenning

2024-08-25

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In the 1990s, Alexander Repenning created AgentSheets, an environment to help kids develop computational thinking skills. It wrapped an unusual computational model with an even more unusual user interface, offering a fascinatingly visual way to specify program behaviour. While it’s not widely-known in our circles, it inspired many other projects, including Scratch and eToys. Then in 2017, Repenning published Moving Beyond Syntax: Lessons from 20 Years of Blocks Programming in AgentSheets, which covers his findings over the years as AgentSheets evolved and transformed, and gives perspective on block-based programming, programming-by-example, agents / rule / rewrite systems, automata, and more.

This is probably the most “normal” episode we’ve done in a while — we stay close to the text and un-clam many a thought-tickling pearl. I’m saying that sincerely now to throw you off our scent the next time we get totally lost in the weeds. I hear a clock ticking.

Links

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• Argos, for our non-UK listeners. They were acquired by future TodePond sponsor, Sainsbury’s.
• Once again, I am asking for your Marcel Goethals makes a lot of cool weird stuff and is a choice follow.
• Scratch isn’t baby programming. Also, you should try this bizarre game Ivan programmed in 3 blocks of Scratch.
• Sandspiel Studio is a delightful block-based sand programming simulator automata environment. Here’s a video of Lu and Max introducing it.
• Simple Made Easy, a seminal talk by Rich Hickey. Still hits, all these years later.
• Someday we’ll do an episode on speech acts.
• Rewrite rules are one example of rewriting in computing.
• Lu’s talk —and I quote— “at Cellpond”, was actually at SPLASH, about Cellpond, and it’s a good talk, about —and I quote— “actually, what if they didn’t give up on rewrite rules at this point in history and what if they went further?”
• Oh yeah — Cellpond is cool. Here’s a video showing you how it works. And here’s a video studying how that video works. And here’s a secret third thing that bends into a half-dimension.
• Here’s Repenning’s “rule-bending” paper: Bending the Rules: Steps Toward Semantically Enriched Graphical Rewrite Rules
• I don’t need to link to SimCity, right? You all know SimCity? Will Wright is, arguably, the #1 name in simulation games. Well, you might not have caught the fantastic article Model Metropolis that unpacks the (inadvertently?) libertarian ideology embodied within the design of its systems. I’d also be remiss not to link to Polygon’s video (and the corresponding write-up), which lend a little more colour to the history.
• Couldn’t find a good link to Blox Pascal, which appears in the paper Towards “Second Generation” Interactive, Graphical Programming Environments by Ephraim P. Glinert, which I also couldn’t find a good link to.
• Projectional / Structural Editor. Here’s a good one.
• Baba is You
• Vernacular Programmers
• Filling Typed Holes with Live GUIs is, AFAIK, the most current canonical reference for livelits.
• I’m not linking to Minecraft. But I will link to the Repeater
• 32 Checkboxes
• Wiremod is a… you know what, just watch this.
• Chomsky Hierarchy
• The Witness
• Ivan wrote a colorful Mastodon thread surveying the history of the Connection Machine.
• Harder Drive is a must-watch video by the inimitable Tom7.
• TORTIS is described in the paper Using Computer Technology To Provide A Creative Learning Environment For Preschool Children by Raida Perlman. See this page for a bunch of great Logo-related reading. (Thanks to the FoC community member who goes by “Personal Dynamic Media” for the link.)
• Programming by Example (PbE)
• Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
• Alex Warth, one of the most lovely humans Ivan knows, is a real champion of “this, because that”.
• Ivan’s magnetic field simulations — Magnets! How do they work?
• Amit Patel’s Red Blob Games, fantastic (fantastic!) explorable explanations that help you study various algorithms and techniques used in game development.
• Collaborative diffusion — ”This article has multiple issues.”
• Shaun Lebron, who you might know as the creator of Parinfer, made a game that interactively teaches you how the ghost AI works in Pac-Man. It’s fun!
• Maxwell’s Equations — specifically Gauss’s law, which states that magnetic fields are solenoidal, meaning they have zero divergence at all points.
• University of Colorado Boulder has a collection of simulations called PhET. They’re… mid, at least when compared to building your own simulation. For instance.

Music featured in this episode:

• snot bubbles

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See you in the future!