Bringing Boys And Girls To Computer Science With 'Alice'

Article: "Rodger, who is trying to turn that around by making programming fun to learn." [...] Prof Rodger: "It's a nationwide problem that there aren't many women in computer science in general. For example, we only have three women faculty in our department, out of 24 positions. And it's been the same for the 15 years I've been here."<p>And? 3 women in the faculty, what's the relevance? I don't understand what the sex of the programmer has to do with anything. What is the nationwide problem that having more female programmers will correct?

I really wish people would stop naming their software 'Alice.' This is at least the third one I've seen.<p>On the other hand, it sounds effective at getting people interested in programming.

Does anybody here know somebody that has used this program to aid their learning of computer science concepts? It's certainly an admirable cause, but is this a better introduction to programming than something like Logo, which has been used to teach programming to kids for many years?<p>Alice is impressive, and you can see the obvious programming influence, but it seems like "Moviemaker with control flow and objects" more than anything else. What problem is it trying to solve?<p>For me, the hardest part of learning elementary computer science was not things like OOP or if-statements, it was data structures, algorithms, and the difficulty of keeping many different interactions in your headspace. It seems like in many CS programs, the data structures or algorithms class is the "weeder" that separates the CS majors from the wannabe CS majors. Personally, I believe the drop-off at this level is more important to address than how many students enroll in CS 101.

I used Alice to start off a beginning programming class at the high school level. It worked great - they got really into it and loved to make things. I think it helped my students' programming intuition as well as retain some of the girls who were very hesitant about taking the class.

I'm glad to see more attention come to this project. As noted in article, this was originally started by Randy Pausch, known in large part for his "The Last Lecture" lecture and book. He did some amazing things, and this project is carrying on his legacy.

What really got me into programming was making web pages. In school they never really go past "Here is how to make a link and make text bold". I think a lot of kids could see the artistic and creative side to making an interactive website that all their friends check out. I could see kids competing to see who can add the coolest feature or make it look the best. But alas, my public school never got far enough into anything for people to make anything fun.