Quote:
Originally Posted by x2495iiii
There are still some excellent advantages 3 has over 2, and when it's finished, 2 will be laughably useless in comparison, but at the moment, 2 is more useful to the typical user.
|
I think they are different animals meeting the needs of different groups. The basic difference I see, in the very limited amount I have played with 3, is that it is more complex - which hopefully means more powerful as well. Alice 3 seems to be "closer to the programmer" so to speak while Alice 2 tries to make things simpler, more the "ignore the man behind the curtain" approach.
Alice 2 has two use cases I can see going forward. The first is the 6 - 8 th grade where kids can start to "play" with Alice and begin to understand the relationship between the instructions, methods and functions they use and what happens when the movie is run. The other use case involves what I have been doing for the past several years. I try to teach creative problem solving mostly to new college students in non science curriculum. For me Alice provides the right blend of structure, ability to create, and quick feedback. To most students Alice, and programming in general, are outside their realm of experience so they are learning the basic “toolbox” used in programming and hopefully they gain some insight into the tools available and how they can be fitted together to make different things happen.
Alice 2 is not perfect, or there wouldn't be an Alice 3! But it is fairly clean and does not invoke the kind of panic attacks sometimes seen in the less technically experienced audience.
Always remember the mantra of Programming:
The damn thing does exactly what I tell it!
Mark