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I'm not sure if someone can help or if this is even the right place to ask, but I've been looking for a while for a marvelous essay / blog post / article from an author whose name I don't recall, that I had stumbled upon a few years ago.

From what I recall, the author had been credited as an inspiration for Khan Academy's "Intro to Computer Programming" interface. The author says in that article that much better than this interface can be done.

The essay is then a point-by-point lesson on UX design in general, going over possible improvements to Khan Academy's UI/UX interface for learning code, as a detailed example of each of the points he is making.

Thank you very much to anyone that might know what I am referring to, and link me to it.

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    $\begingroup$ Can't say whatever this q is relevant to here. I'd certainly be pleased and enriched with more data on how KA (type) materal is made.Upvoted $\endgroup$
    – Rusi
    Oct 11, 2020 at 2:16
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    $\begingroup$ As an educational resource-request, I don't think it's off-topic, though this is a small enough core community that I don't know if you will receive any answers. While we have a fair amount of knowledge about CS instruction, this is very needle-in-a-haystack. You may get lucky, however. Also, if you eventually find it on your own, a self-answer is always appropriate. $\endgroup$
    – Ben I. ♦
    Oct 11, 2020 at 3:04
  • $\begingroup$ Just noticed in my comment above that "whether" got changed to "whatever". Phone typing + spellcorrect!! $\endgroup$
    – Rusi
    Oct 11, 2020 at 10:44

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I found it !! Boy, I'm so glad. Had a bolt of insight in how I should use Google's advanced search features, and I found it.

Here is the article: http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/

An article by Bret Victor, from 2012. A great read, for those curious.

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    $\begingroup$ Lovely article — thanks for sharing. It's remarkable how wrong the general pattern of doing things can be and for how long this wrongness can persist My personal list $\endgroup$
    – Rusi
    Oct 30, 2020 at 4:47
  • $\begingroup$ Nice blog and article, thank you too! My addition: we take notes in university not for any real pedagogical value, but because when European universities (Bologna, Sorbonne, Oxbridge) were created in the 11th-12th centuries, the printing press had not been invented yet. So the young scholars would arrive with blank codices to write their own textbooks via dictation. In the age of the educational game and the pdf, 900 years later, we have barely changed our practices. And the rare studies that compare note-taking to analytical reading tend to all favor the latter... $\endgroup$
    – Tristan Duquesne
    Oct 30, 2020 at 12:15
  • $\begingroup$ Um... I wonder what you think of this demo of note-taking. See the article from beginning for general pic. Basically the guy takes math-notes directly in real time in math classes using fancy vim features for latex! More realistically, if the teacher is not following a text or making pdfs, what do u recommend the students do? $\endgroup$
    – Rusi
    Oct 30, 2020 at 14:11
  • $\begingroup$ Interesting methodology, but it requires a lot of work, setup, and technical competence that can't really be required of every student. Additionally, it's a solution to a problem that shouldn't be there; scans of lecture notes, or better, LaTeX pdfs should be a requirement for teachers. COVID reveals the bursting seams. Personally, what I'd recommend is for students to find appropriate/recommended textbooks online "by any means necessary" and spend a lot of time in the library or at home reading and taking notes (or making flashcards) of their reading (definitions, intuitions, theorems, etc). $\endgroup$
    – Tristan Duquesne
    Oct 30, 2020 at 14:48
  • $\begingroup$ That article was brilliant, thanks for the link. But in the end, while there are a lot of references to packages of historical significance, I'm not sure there's anything like what he describes still in existence, for actually learning to program today. Has anyone implemented a learnable programming environment and made it available in the way that Khan Academy is? $\endgroup$
    – Joshua Frank
    Feb 8, 2021 at 19:22

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