The performance problems were related to the larger scrolling worlds. The H2DP versions got slower the more clouds were in the maps. As an aside, what drove the 20-something fps tic rate for H2DP, versus 30 for an every-other-vsync update?
He is already through Algebra 2, so he gets functions. He didn't have any difficulty applying the functional image model, but when you have 20 lines of text drawing composed together, it really looks like you are just drawing things one after another, but backwards. The cases where it has value, like building a character up out of multiple things, then placing it somewhere in the world, tend to be the minority of operations compared to just drawing independent elements on the screen. My wife managed programmers for years, and she has opinions about pragmatic developers, which usually involve Java or C++. I tend to think that worrying about our 10 year old's future career prospects is a bit premature, and want to focus on developing abstract programming skills. :-) Unity/C# can be incredibly rewarding, but the entire ecosystem almost drives you away from programming as a beginner -- find the right script on the asset store and figure out how to configure it in the editor, rather than reinventing the wheel and writing it yourself. One of the non-obvious things that I think is beneficial with DrRacket is that it has an approachable complexity level. Dropping a newbie into Eclipse or MonoDevelop makes them feel like they are walking around in a byzantine museum, afraid to touch things, while DrRacket feels closer to old-school personal computers where you felt like you were in command of the machine. -----Original Message----- From: Matthias Felleisen [mailto:matth...@ccs.neu.edu] Sent: Monday, August 24, 2015 12:18 PM To: John Carmack Cc: Racket Users Subject: Re: [racket-users] My son's game in Racket Thanks for sharing. You can let Ryan know that he has his first grandma user, and in that mode, I managed to get a few extra lives. A couple of comments: -- In the past, some teachers have shared similar 'world/universe' games with me with similar performance. -- If your son is in middle school, he should see "pre-algebra" soon, and you may wish to revisit the initial drafts of the game then. ---- You can show directly how "pre-algebra" applies and how the game is basically written in pre-algebra. -- Learning FP and the connection to math may work better if you actually use the design recipe from HtDP [2e]. ---- I know of a child who worked through this book between the ages of 8 and 12 and had a grand time with math and programming then. -- And finally, I am curious about your wife's comment. ---- What's so objectionable to learning fundamentals first and commercial things when you need to go professional? ---- Your son used C#/Unity last year. Was it much easier? I have acknowledged the lack of a growth path from 'world' to a performant model in the past, and I will continue to admit the problem. -- Matthias -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Racket Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
