Lisp, Jazz, Aikido -- Three Expressions of a Single Essence

The relation between Science (what we can explain) and Art (what we can't) has long been acknowledged and while every science contains an artistic part, every art form also needs a bit of science. Among all scientific disciplines, programming holds a special place for two reasons. First, the artistic part is not only undeniable but also essential. Second, and much like in a purely artistic discipline, the act of programming is driven partly by the notion of aesthetics: the pleasure we have in creating beautiful things. Even though the importance of aesthetics in the act of programming is now unquestioned, more could still be written on the subject. The field called "psychology of programming" focuses on the cognitive aspects of the activity, with the goal of improving the productivity of programmers. While many scientists have emphasized their concern for aesthetics and the impact it has on their activity, few computer scientists have actually written about their thought process while programming. What makes us like or dislike such and such language or paradigm? Why do we shape our programs the way we do? By answering these questions from the angle of aesthetics, we may be able to shed some new light on the art of programming. Starting from the assumption that aesthetics is an inherently transversal dimension, it should be possible for every programmer to find the same aesthetic driving force in every creative activity they undertake, not just programming, and in doing so, get deeper insight on why and how they do things the way they do. On the other hand, because our aesthetic sensitivities are so personal, all we can really do is relate our own experiences and share it with others, in the hope that it will inspire them to do the same. My personal life has been revolving around three major creative activities, of equal importance: programming in Lisp, playing Jazz music, and practicing Aikido. But why so many of them, why so different ones, and why these specifically? By introspecting my personal aesthetic sensitivities, I eventually realized that my tastes in the scientific, artistic, and physical domains are all motivated by the same driving forces, hence unifying Lisp, Jazz, and Aikido as three expressions of a single essence, not so different after all. Lisp, Jazz, and Aikido are governed by a limited set of rules which remain simple and unobtrusive. Conforming to them is a pleasure. Because Lisp, Jazz, and Aikido are inherently introspective disciplines, they also invite you to transgress the rules in order to find your own. Breaking the rules is fun. Finally, if Lisp, Jazz, and Aikido unify so many paradigms, styles, or techniques, it is not by mere accumulation but because they live at the meta-level and let you reinvent them. Working at the meta-level is an enlightening experience. Understand your aesthetic sensitivities and you may gain considerable insight on your own psychology of programming. Mine is perhaps common to most lispers. Perhaps also common to other programming communities, but that, is for the reader to decide..

Increasing student motivation in computer programming with gamification

Games have important motivational power. They take advantage of a set of tools to encourage people to engage with them just for the joy of playing and the possibility to win. While gamification is gaining ground in a lot of areas in our society, its application in education is still an emerging trend. In recent years, gamification has attracted the attention of researchers from different areas such as teaching and learning computer programming. Ever since the first programming languages emerged, the problems inherent to programming teaching and learning have been studied and investigated. The theme is very serious, not only for the important concepts underlying computer science courses but also for reducing the lack of motivation, failure, and abandonment that result from student frustration. In most of these studies and research one factor prevails, lack of student motivation or how to motivate students to learn programming. One way to combat this problem is to use gamification. Using game design elements in non-game contexts is one of the good ways to motivate and encourage students to learn programming. To assess how gamification impacted the learning experience, we compared data from one gamified and non-gamified year. In general, the results show significant improvements in terms of attendance to class, participation, and proactivity. They also suggest that our approach can reduce the high rate of failure grade among students. In conclusion, this case study, we show how the use of concepts related to gamification can improve motivation, passion, beauty, joy, awe, e naturally the succeed in programming

CBUSSTUDENTHACK: ​Innovation and Inspiration for Everyone

CBusStudentHack is a 7-week programming contest organized by Franklin University for High School students around the Central Ohio region. The event aims at promoting computer science education and providing High School students with 21st century skills needed for college and career readiness. Since its inception in 2015, this event has attracted a lot of students to learn, design and develop mobile apps to solve problems relevant to their own life and make a difference in the community. Enrollment has grown significantly and tripled only in three years. The impact of this event is beyond getting students to write computer programs. It provides an opportunity to engage young students in technology education, to bring Computer Science to underrepresented groups, to empower students to bring their creativity to life, and to discover the fun and beauty in solving real problems with computing.https://fuse.franklin.edu/ss2018/1009/thumbnail.jp

Research questions and approaches for computational thinking curricula design

Teaching computational thinking (CT) is argued to be necessary but also admitted to be a very challenging task. The reasons for this, are: i) no general agreement on what computational thinking is; ii) no clear idea nor evidential support on how to teach CT in an effective way. Hence, there is a need to develop a common approach and a shared understanding of the scope of computational thinking and of effective means of teaching CT. Thus, the consequent ambition is to utilize the preliminary and further research outcomes on CT for the education of the prospective teachers of secondary, further and higher/adult education curricula