View Full Version : Typing text instead of drag&drop

12-09-2009, 05:18 PM
Does Alice support typing rather than drag&drop once the student has become familiar with the programming language? Is it possible to use both modes in concert?

The reason I ask is that once you know the names of what you want to do, it is almost always faster to type than to drag&drop (sifting through menus, etc). Try just typing something like the word "powerpoint" and compare that to the time it takes to find the Powerpoint icon in your start-menu...

So by enabling fluid typing as well as drag&drop, you can quickly become much faster for things you know, and use drag&drop for things you are uncertain of. At the same time, this lessens the step to traditional programming languages like Java, in particular if Java is used with an advanced IDE. An advanced IDE adds quite a bit of drag&drop to standard languages, bridging the gap from the other side...

12-09-2009, 05:25 PM
No, not yet unfortunately. It's a planned feature for Alice 3, though.

Personally, I actually find the drag and drop faster, but I guess that's just me.