[mhurron]

It looks like there are many, many implementations of Karel the Robot.

I first saw Karel watching the Engineering Anywhere CS106a videos provided by Stanford. That course was in Java but used Karel at the beginning to get students used to writing programs, in this case instructions to the robot. If things like why ; and what is this `public void` had to be introduced before the groundwork for understanding what they were doing, it was done with a 'do this and we'll be able to explain why shortly.' Which to me, is a perfectly valid way of introducing things.

Because the Karel implementation there was Java, controlling the robot was just Java. You learned Java syntax as you played in the sandbox. You used that syntax as you moved out of the sandbox.

FYI the semi-colon at then end of the lines, if I remember correctly, was explained with this is how you tell the computer in this language we're done with a statement. No different then us using periods in English at the end of a sentence, its just the rules of this language.

As an aside, I really liked the Stanford CS106a course videos. I think the instructor did a very good job introducing Java and programing in general.