Blocks at Your Fingertips: Blurring the Line Between Blocks and Text in GP
Visual blocks languages offer many advantages to the beginner or “casual” programmer. They eliminate syntax issues, allow the user to work with logical program chunks, provide affordances such as drop-down menus, and leverage the fact that recognition is easier than recall. However, as users gain ex...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
| Published: |
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
2015
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/98451 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6732-6775 |
| _version_ | 1826214599805894656 |
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| author | Monig, Jens Ohshima, Yoshiki Maloney, John H. |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory Monig, Jens Ohshima, Yoshiki Maloney, John H. |
| author_sort | Monig, Jens |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Visual blocks languages offer many advantages to the beginner or “casual” programmer. They eliminate syntax issues, allow the user to work with logical program chunks, provide affordances such as drop-down menus, and leverage the fact that recognition is easier than recall. However, as users gain experience and start creating larger programs, they encounter two inconvenient properties of pure blocks languages: blocks take up more screen real-estate than textual languages and dragging blocks from a palette is slower than typing.
This paper describes three experiments in blurring the line between blocks and textual code in GP, a new blocks language for casual programmers currently under development. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:08:03Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/98451 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:08:03Z |
| publishDate | 2015 |
| publisher | Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/984512022-10-02T06:33:10Z Blocks at Your Fingertips: Blurring the Line Between Blocks and Text in GP Monig, Jens Ohshima, Yoshiki Maloney, John H. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory Maloney, John H. Maloney, John H. Visual blocks languages offer many advantages to the beginner or “casual” programmer. They eliminate syntax issues, allow the user to work with logical program chunks, provide affordances such as drop-down menus, and leverage the fact that recognition is easier than recall. However, as users gain experience and start creating larger programs, they encounter two inconvenient properties of pure blocks languages: blocks take up more screen real-estate than textual languages and dragging blocks from a palette is slower than typing. This paper describes three experiments in blurring the line between blocks and textual code in GP, a new blocks language for casual programmers currently under development. 2015-09-10T17:40:49Z 2015-09-10T17:40:49Z 2015-10 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/ConferencePaper http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/98451 Monig, Jens, Yoshiki Ohshima, and John Maloney. "Blocks at Your Fingertips: Blurring the Line Between Blocks and Text in GP." 2015 IEEE Blocks and Beyond Workshop (October 2015). https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6732-6775 en_US http://cs.wellesley.edu/~blocks-and-beyond/home.html Proceedings of the 2015 IEEE Blocks and Beyond Workshop Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. application/pdf Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Maloney |
| spellingShingle | Monig, Jens Ohshima, Yoshiki Maloney, John H. Blocks at Your Fingertips: Blurring the Line Between Blocks and Text in GP |
| title | Blocks at Your Fingertips: Blurring the Line Between Blocks and Text in GP |
| title_full | Blocks at Your Fingertips: Blurring the Line Between Blocks and Text in GP |
| title_fullStr | Blocks at Your Fingertips: Blurring the Line Between Blocks and Text in GP |
| title_full_unstemmed | Blocks at Your Fingertips: Blurring the Line Between Blocks and Text in GP |
| title_short | Blocks at Your Fingertips: Blurring the Line Between Blocks and Text in GP |
| title_sort | blocks at your fingertips blurring the line between blocks and text in gp |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/98451 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6732-6775 |
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