-
why is it a poison for kids? some language supports the wait function, why limit event based javascript to the mind of a kid?
it is all about the interpreteralso with ES7 it can support async and await, is it really a poison?
Unreality-
The poison part meant to be slight joke.
In most languages a delay / wait literally waits at that point, and nothing else can happen simultaneously. This leads to locked-up UIs & CPUs sitting and waiting later. More and more languages include some form of async-await, or already have Future / Promise / Task to help avoid blocking code and callback hell.If you do that with async-await, it won't block the CPU, it 's just a state machine, that gives the illusion of "sync" code. While allowing the CPU can do whatever it wants. Execute other code, or go to sleep to save energy.
Ok, that's really far from a kid just learning programming, and I have no experience teaching kids. So you are right, it should be as simple as possible.
If someone has never seen programming, I guess the concept of awhileloop is something new as well.
Can you get to the same end result withrun code every X secondsblock?
For example: can you easily blink 2 LEDs at different frequency? Have never played with Blockly & Espruino, but I think that would need two "timer" blocks, and pretty much done. It would be much difficult in a while loop.
For interaction (UIs with buttons & leds, or some external chip) an event-driven approach feels better. Honestly, don't know which one would be more easier for kids to grasp. I started with Pascal & C in the school, for and while loops, etc. Those languages don't support async. But what if a kid can start with a language that has async support?
AkosLukacs
The
nodeMCUresets, because the ESP8266 has a watchdog, and the while loop prevents control returning to the underlying Espressif OS. But I'm pretty sure it would mess up USB and Bluetooth communications as well. Also, even a simple uart buffer - that uses HW uart & buffer - could overflow in a couple of seconds.Almost wrote that there could be a "main loop a'la arduino" thing in Espruino-Blockly, that emulates the expected behaviour. But the purist inside me thinks that kids mind should not contaminated be by seeing a blocking wait call on a microcontroller. Or actually in any code. Even if everybody seem to do that.
Did you know that god kills a kitten when you use blocking wait in any code? :O
Instead if the
while(true)block, you can use therun code every X secondsblock I guess.