teaching novices to use sam

teaching novices to use sam

[forsyth]

if they like its style, it's fairly easy to get experienced
programmers to use sam happily.  has anyone, perhaps at a university,
any experience in trying to get novices (ie, students) to use
sam as a first editor?  (some, but not all, will actually have used
fairly simple minded editors under Windows and similar systems
at home and at school.)  i made sam and a few other mouse-based
editors available to students during the last academic year,
but because many were taught vi (not by me) as the first editor,
i suspect they never bothered to switch.  others found difficulty
getting to grips with the mouse (quite likely because it wasn't
a good make of mouse).  what experiences have others had/seen?

Re: teaching novices to use sam

[John Mackin]

    has anyone, perhaps at a university, any experience in trying to
    get novices (ie, students) to use sam as a first editor?

Yes.  They did (are still doing?) research on this at the Basser Department
of Computer Science here at the University of Sydney.  You might want
to ask Judy Kay (<judy@cs.su.oz.au>) about it directly; I suspect she's
not on this list, but I believe she is/was involved with the research.

OK,
John.