What langauge would you choose next?

Hey, good evening. I have a question I could not find anyone asking, sorry if I'm just missing a post.
I wanted to ask former students especially, what language have you learned since Alice? I have no intentions of pursuing programing professionally, and visual basic it the successor course at my college. But what have you taken?

Java? Some form of C? HTML? (insert here)? I'm curious to know what, why, and what you've done with it.

Thanks!
CS

[x2495iiii]

I've taken Java before I taught myself Alice, and at the moment I'm taking HTML, SQL, and I'm teaching myself Visual C#.

Are you asking what your next step should be, or just trying to see how many people are actually moving on with their programming learning?

Alice has some intriguing and exciting ideas as far as a teaching program. But the text and my class give little guidance on adapting programming concepts learned under Alice to say, Perl for example.

So if someone learned Alice first, where did they go second and how was that learning experience? i.e. Not knowing your background, what interests you in Visual C#? Has concepts learned in Alice helped you learn Vis C#? Does knowing Java help you deal with or understand problems encountered in Alice?

I wont say "Does Alice actually teach anything" becuase a) Yes, it does and b) Especially if you care enough to work and learn anything! But has it prepared you better than a traditional dive-right-in, learn some syntax, "Hello world!" approach?

What I really need is a course in communicating in fewer lines of type rather than programming in few lines of code!

[x2495iiii]

I see.

I know having a previous knowledge of Java was helpful, but not essential. In my opinion, the most valuable asset I had when learning Alice was a positive attitude. I really wanted to learn how to do visual things with programs, and Java was all I'd worked with prior, so Alice blew my mind. After working with it for a number of years, I felt I'd hit the limit of what I could do in Alice and moved on to something more powerful, more capable of making dreams become visible, tangible reality. Hence, Visual C#, in which I'm able to work with XNA Game Studio (which comes with extensive video tutorials).

My recommendation to teachers using Alice would be to use the exercises in the book to teach students new concepts in Alice, but encourage them to add their own unique touch to each exercise, maybe even creating free-for-all assignments with a goal, but no guidelines (e. g., make a short movie about your dream job). This is what I did myself, and it kept me interested in Alice. I looked forward to expressing myself while learning something I could use in future assignments and projects.

Also, encourage the students to use Alice for more than just your class, if possible. I was able to use Alice worlds for projects in AP English, Pre-Calculus, and for a video in a contest (that I ended up winning). They should know they're only limited by their imaginations (and by the Mean Queen).

After learning Alice, you could let them try making something using "java mode," which uses syntax similar to a Java program and is more appropriate for students moving on to something more orthodox. After that, its up to the teacher. If you want to stick with easy languages, go with Python (this will come with the added bonus of advanced students being able to write custom scripts in Alice to accomplish tasks such as saving and loading game-specific data). If you want to move on to something more mainstream, Visual C# is a good choice because of its ability to use more powerful graphics drivers than Alice, its ability to load and unload data as modern games can (unlike Alice), and its video tutorials for beginners covering both 2d and 3d gaming (for XNA Game Studio, at least).

There. I did my best to answer each issue. Hope it's not too much to handle. May the teaching go well!

I did not start with Alice (I started with lua). It did help me out a lot better than self-teaching for the first time. After I finished with it, I went towards self-teaching C and C++. I am currently working with Project Euler to keep my programming and math skills up and I am also looking to do the same with C++ as well as look for a graphics library that I will be using for my future projects (possibly OpenGL).

The project I will be working on next will most likely be a CAS in C#, which will be donated to the high school I went to as so I can get my name out (once I self-teach the syntax for that language ).

next i will choose Combined Language or JAVA

[arty-fishL]

I know alice, python, jython, prolog, dev pascal, basic html and I have an understanding of how Java works, so I would say next is to learn Java properly.