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Subject: 
Re: Limitations in RCX language
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.robotics
Date: 
Fri, 8 Jan 1999 16:50:59 GMT
Viewed: 
1238 times
  
I like what I see.  However, is there nowhere to add comments to your code?

Thanks.

Bruce

David Van Wagner wrote:

I recommend "Gordon's Brick Programmer" as a replacement for the Mindstorms
Programming Environment.  Tree view based instead of blocks:  point and
click to add commands, drag to move them, allows variables, and nested
loops.  No C or Visual Basic programming required!

http://www.umbra.demon.co.uk/gbp.html

-Dave VW

-----Original Message-----
From: David Warnock <david@sundayta.co.uk>
To: Bruce Rhodewalt <lugnet.robotics@lugnet.com>; lego-robotics@crynwr.com
<lego-robotics@crynwr.com>
Date: Monday, January 04, 1999 2:44 PM
Subject: Re: Limitations in RCX language

Bruce,

Okay, I'm not nuts.  But why haven't I found any other complaints • about this?
Nothing in the FAQ or any newsgroups.  I fully expected adults to • want to move
beyond the interface, and to be capable of it, but what about kids? • Are there
just not that many children with LMS so far?  I was really excited • about getting
my kids' hands on some programming, but it's a bad situation when • an 11-year-old
can bump into a wall on her first day.

For what it's worth I agree totally. The Mindstorm programming
environment is too weak. I put a message up on their web site forum
detailing some of my problems that I found with my 6 (nearly 7 year
old).

For example I cannot see why they designed a user interface for
Windows 95 and later that is fixed at 640x480 resolution. I would have
thought that most win 95 boxes are running at 800x600 or 1024x768
these days.  We actually use a 21" screen at 1600x1200 and Mindstorms
looks silly.

Also our kids are used to a standard mouse usage for drag and drop -
all their games use that. So why does mindstorms have to be different?
At least standard behaviour should be an option.

I do like the right click to turn over blocks but the user interface
for typing in numbers (eg wait delay times) is wierd, it's not clear
when yoiu can type the number.

Then again why oh why are we forced to 8 character filenames on a
32bit only application.

Like you I really hope for a major improvement in the next version,
because this has a lot of the things right and it's not soo much to
make it really powerful (like an advanced set of blocks with variables
etc). The nesting could be easily dealt with by forcing use of
MyCommands, as for limits of 14 blocks in a stack it is crazy.

We also got very confused when a stack of a second sensor started
executing before the first finished. As you said there is no
documentation about this. We have reduced the problem by always
setting directions explicitly rather than using reverse direction.

I had never planned to use the Mindstorm software myself but like you
I will have to look for something better for the kids before very long
(as they are so much younger I have a bit more time for lego to get it
right).

Dave


David Warnock
Sundayta Ltd
--
Did you check the web site first?: http://www.crynwr.com/lego-robotics

--
Did you check the web site first?: http://www.crynwr.com/lego-robotics

--
Bruce Rhodewalt     aka kahuna@tikipub.com
Tiki Publishing: Creative Internet solutions since 1995
74-040 Highway 111, Suite JJ3, Palm Desert, CA 92260
PGP: http://pgp.ai.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xADFDEB91



Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Limitations in RCX language
 
I recommend "Gordon's Brick Programmer" as a replacement for the Mindstorms Programming Environment. Tree view based instead of blocks: point and click to add commands, drag to move them, allows variables, and nested loops. No C or Visual Basic (...) (25 years ago, 7-Jan-99, to lugnet.robotics)

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