codeworld VS portacle

Code World[1] is a great project that addresses a number of the problems from the article, with an eye towards using Haskell to teach children basic math and programming simultaneously. Code World directly addresses a number of the obstacles outlined in this article:

1. Using an online editor with a rich built-in library removes any toolchain problems.

2. A custom standard library simplifies pedagogically unnecessary details like Foldable

3. The custom standard library also avoids currying (f(a, b) for functions rather than f a b)

4. Custom error messages improve the feedback students get from the compiler

I would highly recommend Code World to anybody looking to teach programming with Haskell. If you want to teach Haskell in a way that fits the existing ecosystem, it's also possible to run Code World without the custom standard library[2].

[1]: https://code.world/#

[2]: https://code.world/haskell#

Alternatively, I'm a big fan of https://code.world which is specifically geared towards learners who want to work up to making simple games. It's kind of a toy, but imo resembles a "real" programming language a lot more than other educational programming languages

Loose connection, but made me remember https://code.world/ uses a Haskell-like functional language to define still pictures, animations, or even games.

I second gloss! It's a bit limited (no sound, fonts, nor even text centering, but you do have support for vector and bitmap graphics, color manipulation, mouse, keyboard, and animations), but it's so, so easy to use that I not only recommend it (or the similar Code World) for anybody's first game, I still use it for my newer games.

Try https://code.world/

Two that I can think of:

- Bootstrap teaches a toned-down version of Racket (i.e. Scheme): https://bootstrapworld.org/materials/spring2021/en-us/course... . It's taught in some schools as well as a comp sci curriculum.

- https://code.world/ teaches using a toned-down version of Haskell. To my knowledge it's not used in schools.

I had the silly 'fromString' error you get when using RebindableSyntax but had forgotten what to do next. Quick Google search and I hit on codeworld #59.

That's a matter of tooling and environment. You can have a look at examples of drawing animations with physics simulation and user input at https://code.world. It's pure Haskell code without any scary abstractions, just functions from state to the next state.

I'm not a user myself, but I understand Lambdabot and mueval depend on it. More generally, anything that executes Haskell code supplied by untrusted users would fit the bill. I don't know if CodeWorld for example allows user-supplied modules, but if it did they'd have to be Safe.

I agree that it's a hurdle.

Portacle, https://portacle.github.io/ , is a way around config and whatnot, lowering the threshold a little.

Reminder that Portacle is a way to try Common Lisp (and its tooling!) in a portable, self-contained way, on all platforms.

https://portacle.github.io/

Thanks for your work! I can definitely see how your project improve CL's accessibility. Not sure if you're aware of the Portacle project, but I think there is an opportunity merging two projects together.

Also it is not much of a kit either since the user is left to install all the tools on their own. User who wants an easy to start kit with Emacs baked in is much better using Portacle or clean Emacs, or some of more polished Emacs distributions like Doom or Prelude together with Roswell for the "kit" part.

Then there's Portacle, a portable Emacs with SBCL, Quicklisp and Emacs goodies (magit, file-tree…) pre-installed. https://portacle.github.io/

There are some updates about Portacle last year. The latest is 1.4c Pre-release. https://github.com/portacle/portacle/releases Without Mac, can not verify it.

See also Portacle: https://portacle.github.io/ It is a portable Emacs that is ready-to-use for CL: it comes with Slime, some Emacs packages, Quicklisp and git.

Others have covered the language, but you'll also want tooling. An easy one to get started with is Portacle. It's a Lisp compiler, emacs with Lisp plugins, QuickLisp package manager, etc. so you don't have to spend time setting it all up.

1) I also love VSCode ... but for Lisp Emacs really is so much better. Look at Portacle. It basically is Emacs that's well configured for Common Lisp with SBCL right out of the box. You'll have to learn how SLIME work (the shortcuts to recompile running Lisp, etc).