The Randy Pausch story is probably one of the most widely known stories in the last two years. Pausch, a former Carnegie Mellon Computer Science Professor, lost his battle with pancreatic cancer July 25, 2008. He was 47 years old and had accomplished volumes in those 47 years. I have finally gotten around to listen to the audio version of his New York Times Bestseller "The Last Lecture" and have watched the video of the lecture. I will post "The Last Lecture: Achieving your childhood dreams" in my next post. Pausch's comments about life absolutely belong on a blog entitled "The Best Education." While Pausch's thoughts on living right should not be ignored, the Professor also expressed the hope that Alice, his 3D programming brainchild, be preserved and extended as his surviving contribution to growing the programming community. Last night I downloaded Alice and Alice Storytelling on two laptops and walked my 10 year old daughter and 6 year old son through some of the basics of Object Oriented programming. I did not get to play with Alice until tonight. I can tell that there is a whole lot more to learn but that Alice is probably the least intimidating, best way to begin to learn the fundamentals of programming.
Alice is absolutely Free of charge and is an excellent way to explore creativity and programming. I understand that Alice is used to teach programming to middle school, high school, and college students and even if you do not see yourself as a future programmer you should take a whirl with Alice. She's a lot of fun. Thank You, Randy Pausch, et al for providing the world with a free fun tool that may open up worlds to all of us.
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