Help me find out more about Alice

January 7, 2009 12:28 PM

Go Ask Alice: Can anyone direct me to some good links about Alice (programming) so I can avoid buying a very expensive textbook..?

I am taking a programming-for-non-programmers type (university) course where we will be using Alice, an educational software program from Carnegie Mellon. The textbook I've been told to get is Starting out with Alice by Tony Gaddis - it is 75$[cnd] from the college bookstore, and not much cheaper online (especially when you consider time + shipping costs). I suspect there is plenty of helpful information online and I am hoping that anyone with experience using Alice could post up some links that have helped them. Thanks mefites!

posted by tamarack to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

Best answer: I've had the best luck using the forums at Alice.org, particularly the "how do I" ones. I've used a couple of these texts (from the instructor side of things), and while they are nice, they are definitely not needed.

Look at some of the example worlds in the forums, and you will quickly see how you can modify a different project to do what you want!

http://www.alice.org/community/forumdisplay.php?f=16
posted by midwestguy at 12:47 PM on January 7, 2009

Response by poster: Thanks midwestguy - it looks like this Alice thing is not so well known by the mefites! I'm still debating whether I'll get the text, just so I can follow along, but I appreciate your insight as an instructor. I might go ask the prof, candidly, what she thinks... ;)
posted by tamarack at 12:56 PM on January 9, 2009