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by zalmoxes 4287 days ago
Not bad. Reminds me of Hackety Hack.

Bret Victor's criticism of KhanAcademy is just as relevant here http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/

2 comments

I think Bret Victor underplays the importance of liveness ("almost worthless", eh?), and doesn't touch on the possibilities of making programming a shared experience, that is itself culturally meaningful, inclusive activity, e.g. musical. This is what Sam Aaron and other live coders have been working on for the past decade. It's a totally different approach really, through making music together, nonstop for years.. Sonic Pi is impressive and successful because it's grounded in actual arts practice, not extrapolations from rigged demos.
I doubt that Bret Victor would be critical to Sonic Pi given his love for Seymore Paperts "Mindstorms" which has a progamming language called Turtle.

Sonic Pi is just that the Turtle of music programming environments. It doesn't start with abstraction but with a ground in playability.