CB>I don't often disagree with you on matters educational, but on this one
CB>I'm of a different mind.  Who needs to write programs today, especially
CB>in BASIC or LOGO?
SK>I must say that I am shocked to here such an argument against
SK>programming (why teach it as who really needs it nowadays) coming 
SK>from both you and Ron McDermott.
I'm not sure I said exactly that?  My thinking was more
along the lines of interest and future programming trends
(I think we're going to have programs writing programs
for the most part, with an object-oriented wysiwyg bent).
SK>Sounds very much like Tom and his "don't teach art and music because 
SK>we don't need it" or Matt's "what use is it to teach Shakespeare...is 
SK>it really needed in one's job?"
Allow me to clarify a bit... First of all, when someone says
"programming", logo isn't the first thing which comes to 
mind... I grant that there are some aspects of logo which
would be beneficial; I find it hard to say the same about
programming in basic, pascal, etc, FOR THE AVERAGE STUDENT.
When I first began working with computers, the one I used
was a Texas Instruments TI99-4A.  This computer did not
have much support, or a wide following, or much in the way
of software available.  As a result, anyone using it
either gave up early or learned to program it themselves.
Some of the best student programming I ever saw came from
students using the TI99-4A -- Necessity is, indeed, the
mother of invention!  Just a side note: One of those kids
started his own business and was just bought out by 
NETSCAPE; he was working on 3-D virtual graphics engines..
With tons of software around, the impetus to do this type 
of thing is just not there (again, for the average person).
Now maybe if we're talking programming Web pages with things
like animation and REALSOUND, we could get something going!
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