Blocks at your fingertips: Blurring the line between blocks and text in GP

Abstract

Abstract-Visual blocks languages offer many advantages to the beginner or "casual" programmer. They eliminate syntax issues, allow the user to work with logical program chunks, provide affordances such as drop-down menus, and leverage the fact that recognition is easier than recall. However, as users gain experience and start creating larger programs, they encounter two inconvenient properties of pure blocks languages: blocks take up more screen real-estate than textual languages and dragging blocks from a palette is slower than typing.This paper describes three experiments in blurring the line between blocks and textual code in GP, a new blocks language for casual programmers currently under development.

Moving Beyond Syntax: Lessons from 20 Years of Blocks Programing in AgentSheets

“…An early version of AgentSheets included an extremely powerful but also somewhat dangerous Lisp block allowing advanced users to enter arbitrary Common Lisp to be integrated into their Blocks program. With the GP system, Mönig et al are going a different route by attempting to create a general purpose blocks programming language powerful enough to implement itself [112]. Alternatively, pedagogical integration would employ scaffolding approaches to transition from a Computational Thinking Tool to a Programming Tool without actually integrating tools technically.…”

Learnable programming

“…The designers of Scratch note that for users "who see programming as a medium for expression, not a path toward a career, Scratch is sufficient for their needs" [28]. The GP blocks environment is being designed to enable "casual programmers" to create ever more sophisticated programs, while removing limits that would force them to switch away from blocks [24].…”

“…Some new blocks environments, such as Greenfoot's framebased Stride editor [16] and GP [24], are designed to be used by programmers to create large programs, so efficient editing is an important design goal.…”

How block-based languages support novices: A Framework for categorizing block-based affordances

“…In other words, block-based languages may struggle to support the External-Interpretative aspect of programming languages. In response to this drawback, new block-based tools are being designed to address this shortcoming by blending features of block-based and text-based modalities [33,34] or by allowing users to move back-and-forth between modalities [35,36].…”