Felienne Hermans introduces Hedy, a gradual programming language designed to teach children coding by slowly introducing syntax levels.
When kids learn to program they often use either a visual language like Scratch, or a textual language like Python. While visual languages are great for the first steps, children and educators often want to move on to textual, but early on, a textual language and its error messages can be scary. Hedy aims bridge this gap with a programming language that is gradual, using different language levels. In level 1, there is hardly any syntax at all; printing is done with: print hello! At every level, new syntax and concepts are added, so learners do not have to master everything at once. Hedy builds up to a subset of Python including conditions, loops, variables and lists. To make learning as accessible as possible, Hedy allows for the use of localized keywords, f.e in Spanish: imprimir Hello! This talk will discuss the pedagogy of Hedy as well as its technical aspects, since a set of changing and localized complex grammars poses several interesting challenges for parsing.
Felienne Hermans
Programming for all!
@Felienne
Felienne is associate professor at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science at Leiden University, where she heads the PERL research group, focused on programming education. She also works at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam one day a week, where she teaches prospective computer science teachers. Felienne is the creator of the Hedy programming language, and was one of the founders of the Joy of Coding conference. Since 2016, she has been a host at SE radio, one of the most popular software engineering podcasts on the web. Felienne is the author of “The Programmer's Brain” a book that helps programmers understand how their brains work and how to use it more effectively. In 2021, Felienne was awarded the Dutch Prize for ICT research. Felienne is a member the board of I&I, the Dutch association of high-school computer science teachers, and of TC39, the committee that designs JavaScript. Felienne blogs at felienne.com
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Why it's here
2 people recommend this
What people say. Recommended for its insightful approach to programming pedagogy and reducing syntax frustration for beginners.
Z
ZeroGravitason Hacker News • Recommends
On “Show HN: Easylang – A browser-based first programming language”
This reminded me a little of Hedy language: link It starts off super simple, like: print something and then introduces all the fiddly concepts like quoting, escaping etc. 1 by 1 until it turns into python. The designer had a neat talk about it at the strange loop conference. One of the themes they talk about is the difference between "easy to learn" and "easy to teach" which I found insightful. linklink to this video
On “Show HN: A 100% free and interactive Python course for coding beginners”
For 8yo, maybe you can consider bringing her through Hedy: link It's gradual (starts easy but limited, then with progress through levels gets more precise and powerful), and I read that it gets to full blown Python programming. Theres an excellent talk on the approach by the author: link to this video
On “I'm a UX Designer and I designed my own programming language called Enzo.”
I haven’t taken a good look at this yet, but you might enjoy Hedy, which introduces programming language syntax from a no background in programming at all perspective: https://hedy.org/
Talk about the motivations: link to this video
On “If you were designing a programming language specifically for teaching people how to program, what would it look like?”
Also there is a talk and a paper about the language:
* "Hedy: A Gradual programming language" by Felienne Hermans (Strange Loop 2022)
* Hedy: A Gradual Language for Programming Education
Both very interesting.
On “Show HN: PyKidos, Teach Your Kid Python in the Browser”
link is spearheaded by the wonderful link you might know her from her spreadsheet related research. She gave a wonderful talk at Splash 2023 on Hedy, I'll see if I can find it. *edit, I don't think it was recorded but I found these two which will do Hedy: Creating a Programming Language for EveryoneFelienne Hermans • YOW! 2023 link "Hedy: A Gradual programming language" by Felienne Hermans (Strange Loop 2022) link to this video
I recommend you watch this video [video it has some very good point about teaching programing, and the tool they present is really cool and helps you get into python fast and without confusion.
