The 8-Year-Old Programmer
“Our society thinks of computer programming as lucrative, therefore it must be hard and dull,” says the leader of the Kodu project, Matt MacLaurin. He says software development should be like a fourth-grade art class: explore, create, discover.
Kodu, built by a team at Microsoft’s main campus outside Seattle, is a programming environment that runs on an Xbox 360, using the game console’s controller rather than a keyboard. Instead of typing if/then statements in a syntax that must be memorized — as adult programmers do — the student uses the Xbox controller to pop up menus that contain options from which to choose. Kodu itself resembles a video game, with a point-and-click interface instead of the thousand-lines-of-text coding tools used by grown-ups.
A simple Kodu program might work like this: The student concocts a plot for an original video game involving, say, motorcycle racing. He then uses the Xbox controller to paint a landscape onscreen. Then he marks out a road-racing course that runs around the terrain. Finally he creates racers who turn left, turn right, speed up or stop whenever specified keys on the controller are pressed. He can also define how the bikes respond when, for example, one runs into another.
