invited-talk

The design of kodu: a tiny visual programming language for children on the Xbox 360

Author:

Matthew B. MacLaurinAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 46, Issue 1

Pages 241 - 246

https://doi.org/10.1145/1925844.1926413

Published: 26 January 2011 Publication History

Abstract

Kodu is a relatively new programming language designed specifically for young children to learn through independent exploration. Kodu seeks to lower the barrier to entry for new programmers by presenting a radically simplified programming model which nevertheless has significant expressive power. Kodu is integrated in a real-time 3D gaming environment and is designed to compete with modern console games in terms of intuitive user interface and graphical production values. In this paper we will review key tradeoffs made in the design of the programming language and illustrate how it is one of very few languages designed using user interface design principles and methodologies, to the extent that the blend of subjective and objective factors considered in the language design have succeeded in presenting a model of programming which is uniquely approachable and creatively empowering for non-technical users.

Supplementary Material

MacLaurin-part2.mov (p241-2.mov)

Part 2 of the video lecture

Download
.11 KB

MP4 File (22-mpeg-4.mp4)

Download
558.75 MB

References

[1]

Microsoft FUSE Labs. Kodu Web Site. {Online} {Cited: November 12, 2010.} http://fuse.microsoft.com/project/kodu.aspx.

[2]

Stolee, K. T. Kodu language and grammar specification. Redmond, WA, USA: Microsoft Research, 2010.

[3]

"Let the players play!" & other earnest remarks about videogame authorship. Teske, Paul and Fristoe, Teale. s.l.: International Society of the Learning Sciences, 2010. ICLS '10 Proceedings of the 9th International Conference of the Learning Sciences - Volume 1.

Digital Library

[4]

Apple Computer, Inc. HyperCard Script Language Guide: The HyperTalk Language. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1988.

Digital Library

[5]

Matthew Conway, et al. Alice: lessons learned from building a 3D system for novices. CHI '00 Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems. The Hague, The Netherlands: s.n., 2000.

Digital Library

[6]

Goldberg, A. Smalltalk-80: the language and its implementation. Boston, MA, USA : Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., 1983. ISBN: 0-201-11371-6.

Digital Library

[7]

Shalit, A. The Dylan reference manual. Redwood City, CA, USA : Addison Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., 1996. ISBN:0-201-44211-6.

[8]

A declarative approach to event-handling in visual programming languages. Burnett, MM and al, et. Seattle, WA, USA : s.n., 1992. Proceedings, 1992 IEEE Workshop on Visual Languages. pp. 34--40.

[9]

New Approaches to Robotics. Brooks, RA. 13, s.l.: Science, 1991, Vol. 253.

[10]

Brooks, Rodney A. Intelligence Without Reason. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT, 1991.

[11]

Brooks, Roney A. Intelligence without representation. {book auth.} George F. Luger. Computation & Intelligence. Menlo Park, CA, USA: American Association for Artificial Intelligence, 1995.

Digital Library

[12]

The impact of web 2.0 technologies in the clsassroom. Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, State of Victoria. 2009.

[13]

Kodu: end-user programmin gand design for games. MacLaurin, Matt. s.l.: ACM, 2009. FDG '09: Proceedings for the 4th International Conference on Foundations of Digital Games.

Digital Library

[14]

The early history of Smalltalk. Kay, Alan C. s.l.: ACM, 1993. HOPL-II: The second ACM SIGPLAN conference on History of programming languages.

Digital Library

[15]

Elephants don't play chess. Brooks, Rodney A. 1--2, 1990, Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Vol. 6.

Digital Library

Cited By

Hartley KRubegni EUnderwood LFinney JBall THodges SDe Halleux PDevine JAnderson EMoskal M(2024)Meet MicroCode: a Live and Portable Programming Tool for the BBC micro:bitProceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference10.1145/3628516.3656995(355-370)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3628516.3656995
Idrees MAslam F(2022)A Comprehensive Survey and Analysis of Diverse Visual Programming LanguagesVFAST Transactions on Software Engineering10.21015/vtse.v10i2.100910:2(47-60)Online publication date: 15-May-2022
https://doi.org/10.21015/vtse.v10i2.1009
Zubair MBrown DHughes-Roberts TBates M(2021)Designing accessible visual programming tools for children with autism spectrum conditionUniversal Access in the Information Society10.1007/s10209-021-00842-y22:2(277-296)Online publication date: 15-Sep-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10209-021-00842-y
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

The design of kodu: a tiny visual programming language for children on the Xbox 360
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
      2. Model curricula
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
  2. Software notations and tools

Recommendations

The design of kodu: a tiny visual programming language for children on the Xbox 360
POPL '11: Proceedings of the 38th annual ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages

Kodu is a relatively new programming language designed specifically for young children to learn through independent exploration. Kodu seeks to lower the barrier to entry for new programmers by presenting a radically simplified programming model which ...
Expressing computer science concepts through Kodu game lab
SIGCSE '11: Proceedings of the 42nd ACM technical symposium on Computer science education

Educational programming environments such as Microsoft Research's Kodu Game Lab are often used to introduce novices to computer science concepts and programming. Unlike many other educational languages that rely on scripting and Java-like syntax, the ...
Neo-Piagetian Classification of Reasoning Ability and Mental Simulation in Microsoft's Kodu Game Lab
SIGCSE '17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

Over the past five years, there has been a major push to develop the computational thinking skills of K-12 students. Tools such as Scratch, Alice, and Kodu have been developed to engage students in learning to program through the creation of ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 46, Issue 1

POPL '11

January 2011

624 pages

ISSN:0362-1340

EISSN:1558-1160

DOI:10.1145/1925844

Issue’s Table of Contents

POPL '11: Proceedings of the 38th annual ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages
January 2011
652 pages
ISBN:9781450304900
DOI:10.1145/1926385
General Chair:
Thomas Ball
Microsoft Research, USA
,
Program Chair:
Mooly Sagiv
Tel Aviv University, Israel

Copyright © 2011 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 26 January 2011

Published in SIGPLAN Volume 46, Issue 1

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Invited-talk

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

62
Total Citations
View Citations
1,601
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)21
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1

Reflects downloads up to 20 Nov 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Hartley KRubegni EUnderwood LFinney JBall THodges SDe Halleux PDevine JAnderson EMoskal M(2024)Meet MicroCode: a Live and Portable Programming Tool for the BBC micro:bitProceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference10.1145/3628516.3656995(355-370)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3628516.3656995
Idrees MAslam F(2022)A Comprehensive Survey and Analysis of Diverse Visual Programming LanguagesVFAST Transactions on Software Engineering10.21015/vtse.v10i2.100910:2(47-60)Online publication date: 15-May-2022
https://doi.org/10.21015/vtse.v10i2.1009
Zubair MBrown DHughes-Roberts TBates M(2021)Designing accessible visual programming tools for children with autism spectrum conditionUniversal Access in the Information Society10.1007/s10209-021-00842-y22:2(277-296)Online publication date: 15-Sep-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10209-021-00842-y
Sharfuddeen Zubair MBrown DBates MHughes-roberts T(2020)Are Visual Programming Tools for Children Designed with Accessibility in Mind?Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Education Technology and Computers10.1145/3436756.3437018(37-40)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3436756.3437018
Fayed MAl-Qurishi MAlamri AHossain MAl-Daraiseh A(2020)PWCT: a novel general-purpose visual programming language in support of pervasive application developmentCCF Transactions on Pervasive Computing and Interaction10.1007/s42486-020-00038-yOnline publication date: 7-Aug-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/s42486-020-00038-y
Baars SMeester SAvgeriou PSchmid K(2019)CodeArenaProceedings of the Second International Conference on Technical Debt10.1109/TechDebt.2019.00023(68-70)Online publication date: 26-May-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TechDebt.2019.00023
Kuo JWu TYe HJiau HOnut IPetriu DChen W(2018)A competitive platform for continuous programming skill enhancementProceedings of the 28th Annual International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering10.5555/3291291.3291296(30-39)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3291291.3291296
Wu PChiu FMayerova KKubincova Z(2018)Educational Robotics at Primary School: Comparison of Two Research Studies2018 17th International Conference on Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training (ITHET)10.1109/ITHET.2018.8424621(1-5)Online publication date: Apr-2018
https://doi.org/10.1109/ITHET.2018.8424621
Zamin NAb Rahim HSavita KBhattacharyya EZaffar MKatijah Mohd Jamil S(2018)Learning Block Programming using Scratch among School Children in Malaysia and Australia: An Exploratory Study2018 4th International Conference on Computer and Information Sciences (ICCOINS)10.1109/ICCOINS.2018.8510586(1-6)Online publication date: Aug-2018
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCOINS.2018.8510586
Lee M(2017)Computational Thinking: Efforts in KoreaEmerging Research, Practice, and Policy on Computational Thinking10.1007/978-3-319-52691-1_22(363-366)Online publication date: 25-Apr-2017
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52691-1_22
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Issue’s Table of Contents