These days, teenagers are quick to turn to their iPods, iPhones or other portable computing devices when they think of using computer technology and shy away from traditional programming languages. Alice is a far cry from these programming languages. It written in Java by the Stage3 Research Group at Carnegie Mellon University that can make writing programs fun, interesting exciting, and even enjoyable. Rather than creating lines and lines of code, Alice uses numerous objects such as furniture, dinosaurs, rocks, space ships and medieval pieces, to name a few, to create 3D animations and games.
Alice Is Serious Programming
Alice is a complete programming language, designed to teach the basics of programming using the same principles and constructs that are used to teach traditional programming languages used in the technology industry. The programming concepts are the same yet the approach is very different.
Goals and Objectives
Creating the Alice programming language was prompted by the frustrations experienced by many first-time programmers, grappling with syntax and logic and hours at the computer before a usable and workable program was written. The goal of the Alice is to change the first experience students have with computer programming by removing unnecessary frustration and providing an environment in which beginning students can create programs they find convincing, persuasive and interesting.
Programming Animations and Games
When producing a program in Alice, typing words is no longer required as words representing commands are dragged and dropped onto objects that these very objects understand. For example, a ballerina can be instructed to “turn on one leg” or “raise the left arm”.
No More Typing
When producing a program in Alice, typing words is no longer required as words representing commands are dragged and dropped onto objects that these very objects understand. For example, a ballerina can be instructed to "turn on one leg" or "raise the left arm." "The Alice program makes it possible for you to learn in a few months how to write 3D animation programs that would probably require you to study for years if you were programming in hard-core Java" claims Dick Baldwin, a professor at the Austin Community College in Austin, Texas, in his on-line tutorial on learning to program in Alice.
All the Features
In addition to regular, straight-forward commands, Alice includes the traditional programming constructs of looping, “do whiles” and “if” statements as well as more unusual ones of questioning distance or height, something that would be more complex in a regular programming language.
The Success of Alice
Alice has become a popular language for many reasons:
- By not having to type the code, the ability to make syntax errors has been removed
- Instant gratification, so to speak, is now possible as the results of adding actions to objects are immediately viewed on the screen.
- Because all work done is much less obscure and more visible, debugging or fixing a program is easily facilitated. Seeing that "the bear moved backward" when it was meant for the bear to move forward can be fixed with a simple mouse click.
The Alice programming environment can be downloaded free of charge from Carnegie Mellon University or from the Alice website.
Jacqueline Masloff - Freelance writing is my fourth career, so to speak. I started my working life as an architect, having graduated from Rensselaer ...
