[maryrosecook]

Sure thing.

1. No principles at all. I know little about education. Since the time I started Isla, and since the time I joined Hacker School as a facilitator, I have been learning as much as I can.

2. It is not tied to any models.

3. I am aiming the language at children who are just learning to read and write. So, children between 5 and 8.

4. I don't know enough, yet, to know if Isla is better than LOGO or Alice.

[chalst]

Two thoughts:

1. The distinction between words that occur directly and words that are quoted seems tricky for a 5yo. - is it really necessary?

2. I played about with Scratch with my eldest daughter when she was four and had next to no reading skills. Having the program be made of blocks with differing shapes and sizes made it possible for her to distinguish between commands without recognising the words. It occurs to me that it might work well for Isla code to have such a visual block structure - there would be a number of ways to realise this.

My daughters are 6 and 9 now: I'll get them to take a look in the next couple of days.

[brudgers]

Have you considered tying your project in with the Racket folks. Matthies Felleisen (The Little Schemer) and that community have a considerable history in designing teaching languages, and Racket has substantial tools for developing languages tailored for learning, e.g. friendly error messages. It also has done a lot of heavy lifting for graphics, webserving and html.

It looks like Isla might slot in to the front end of the spectrum before BSL (Beginning Student Language).

Their middle school resources are here: http://racket-lang.org/learning.html

The technical reports linked from the page might also provide some background in the design of teaching languages.

[ianterrell]

I second brudgers re: noble motives and hard work. :)

Follow up question: Have you stuck it in front of kids to see how they take to it?

Without being based in theory, I'm curious how the language works out in practice.

[maryrosecook]

Most of the stuff I have learnt from the experiences of young children using Isla comes from second hand reports from parents. I have also tested it on non-programmer adults.

There are some definite mistakes in the language.

It uses named nouns, yet in real world, we usually refer to things with adjectives and types. We say "pass me the red apple", not "that apple is called Jimmy, now pass me Jimmy".

People get confused about the difference between strings and variables.

To define a function, you make a list and add built in functions to it. This is awkward.

[LeafStorm]

Have you looked at Inform? There's a paper on its Web site [1] discussing its approach to modeling the world.

[1] http://inform7.com/learn/papers/

[cpeterso]

I was reminded of Inform and also the world modeling languages for AI systems like Cyc.

[igravious]

Regarding referring. There's indexicality[1], no? (Bit of a pretentious word but it's the right word I think.) We point. (We point with our index finger, even). And we say, 'this', and 'that'. and 'these', and 'those'[2].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indexicality

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonstrative_adjective

In a way (when you think about it) "pass me the red apple" is too succinct. Maybe, "there is a red apple", "pass me it" would be expressible is Isla.

And honest to God. I swear I had an Isla-like mini-epiphany about 6 years ago where I wondered if a homoiconic computer language could be fashioned using white space instead of the () of the Lisps and use regular words instead mathematical symbols. It's interesting that you don't have numbers yet. Numbers (written arabic numerals) are very special words. Also it'd be nice considering Isla is using natural language that it speaks the kid's language - so at the start of a block the kid says, "hablo español" or "i speak english" and then all the do-ing words are in the correct language. And Isla needs to grök áccènts on variables for most European languages bar English, seems like it doesn't? (Sorry for nitpicks! Maybe I can help with the coding.)

I applaud your creativity.

[nathanathan]

> It uses named nouns, yet in real world, we usually refer to things with adjectives and types. We say "pass me the red apple", not "that apple is called Jimmy, now pass me Jimmy".

That's an interesting insight. The "pass me the red apple" version seems a bit like a declarative query language.

[dspillett]

> I am aiming the language at children who are just learning to read and write. So, children between 5 and 8.

The effect of that could be interesting to study. Would it cause difficulties for learning "real" grammar, or would exposure to a non-natural language help linguistic development (and to a lesser extent social and intellectual development more generally) as some studies have shown growing up around several natural languages does?

[ewoolery]

I have a 2-yr old daughter, who is a bit young for this. But she named one of her dolls Isla Baila, which I'm taking as a good sign (either that, or she is going to be into dancing). Either way, looking forward to introducing her to a language like this when she is old enough.

[lettergram]

As far as I can tell Isla is simpler and probably better for younger children than LOGO. In my opinion LOGO is actually harder to learn than Python or Ruby for children (at least in my experience from the couple of children I was trying to teach)

[marpstar]

Really? I remember picking up LOGO in Kindergarten. Can't even imagine working with a real language back then. How old were these children and how did you go about teaching them?

[lettergram]

They were 6 and 10, python seemed easier for them to pick up because they had more control AKA I think the turtle and what not confused them. It was much easier for them to name everything themselves and do what they wanted.

[kunai]

I'm not sure if the 5-8 metric is correct. Most of the kids in my school had completely learned reading and writing by 6, and from then on wrote papers and essays without any difficulty (obviously, their vocabulary was not fully developed).

[ThomPete]

A really great book you should read is Seymor Paperts Mindstorms. That will def inspire you and perhaps give you answers to some of the questions I would I agine you are pondering on right now.

Great work, will see what my four year old thinks.

[maryrosecook]

I read and loved Mindstorms. Thanks for the recommendation. Would love to hear what your child thinks of Isla.

[tootie]

My daughter is 5 and just learning to read. If I get her going with Isla while she's doing kindergarten, can she attend Hacker School this summer?