Question

I’m looking for the coolest thing you can do in a few lines of simple code. I’m sure you can write a Mandelbrot set in Haskell in 15 lines but it’s difficult to follow.

My goal is to inspire students that programming is cool.

We know that programming is cool because you can create anything you imagine – it’s the ultimate creative outlet. I want to inspire these beginners and get them over as many early-learning humps as I can.

Now, my reasons are selfish. I’m teaching an Intro to Computing course to a group of 60 half-engineering, half business majors; all freshmen. They are the students who came from underprivileged High schools. From my past experience, the group is generally split as follows: a few rock-stars, some who try very hard and kind of get it, the few who try very hard and barely get it, and the few who don’t care. I want to reach as many of these groups as effectively as I can. Here’s an example of how I’d use a computer program to teach:

Here’s an example of what I’m looking
for: a 1-line VBS script to get your
computer to talk to you:

CreateObject("sapi.spvoice").Speak InputBox("Enter your text","Talk it")

I could use this to demonstrate order
of operations. I’d show the code, let
them play with it, then explain that
There’s a lot going on in that line,
but the computer can make sense of it,
because it knows the rules. Then I’d
show them something like this:

4(5*5) / 10 + 9(.25 + .75)

And you can see that first I need to
do is (5*5). Then I can multiply for
4. And now I’ve created the Object. Dividing by 10 is the same as calling
Speak – I can’t Speak before I have an
object, and I can’t divide before I
have 100. Then on the other side I
first create an InputBox with some
instructions for how to display it.
When I hit enter on the input box it
evaluates or “returns” whatever I
entered. (Hint: ‘oooooo’ makes a
funny sound) So when I say Speak, the
right side is what to Speak. And I
get that from the InputBox.

So when you do several things on a
line, like:

x = 14 + y;

You need to be aware of the order of
things. First we add 14 and y. Then
we put the result (what it evaluates
to, or returns) into x.

That’s my goal, to have a bunch of these cool examples to demonstrate and teach the class while they have fun. I tried this example on my roommate and while I may not use this as the first lesson, she liked it and learned something.

Some cool mathematica programs that make beautiful graphs or shapes that are easy to understand would be good ideas and I’m going to look into those. Here are some complicated actionscript examples but that’s a bit too advanced and I can’t teach flash. What other ideas do you have?

Answer 1

I got a great response from my kids with a quick VB script to manipulate a Microsoft Agent character. For those that aren’t familiar with MS Agent, it’s a series of animated onscreen characters that can be manipulated via a COM interface. You can download the code and characters at the Microsoft Agent download page.

The folllowing few lines will make the Merlin character appear on screen, fly around, knock on the screen to get your attention, and say hello.

agentName = "Merlin"
agentPath = "c:\windows\msagent\chars\" & agentName & ".acs"
Set agent = CreateObject("Agent.Control.2")

agent.Connected = TRUE
agent.Characters.Load agentName, agentPath
Set character = agent.Characters.Character(agentName)

character.Show

character.MoveTo 500, 400
character.Play "GetAttention"
character.Speak "Hello, how are you?"
Wscript.Sleep 15000
character.Stop
character.Play "Hide"

There are a great many other commands you can use. Check http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/funzone/agent.mspx for more information.

EDIT 2011-09-02
I recently discovered that Microsoft Agent is not natively installed on Windows 7. However it is offered as a separate download here. I have not tested this so cannot verify whether it operates.