Teaching CS1 WIth Processing Workshop Day 1

The workshop is about teaching the introductory programming course with Processing, which is an open-source language that's used for visual programming such as images and animations. It basically sits on top of Java,a popular language in which it's already fairly easy to do graphics, and makes those graphics even easier. In particular, hides the complexities of threads and allows the programmer to easily create simple animations. Southern Man will consider using it for his CS1 course as the visual feedback will help students quickly understand the use of loops and branches.

That said, Southern Man will now fuss about the workshop itself as he has high (well, high-ish) standards for such things. In particular:

No computers provided; everyone has to use their own laptop.
No hard-wired network; if your laptop doesn't have wireless networking, too bad.
No books provided. Southern Man expects free books with his workshops.
Box lunches. When a workshop says "lunch provided" he expects a hot meal.
Poor preparation. The presenters seem to be making it up as they go along.
Poor schedule. The sessions are short, with no night labs at all.
Poor organization. They didn't even have nametags for us.

And SMU had only one geocache on campus. One. That's pathetic

OK, so that last item isn't their fault but the organizers get low marks for, well, their organization. But they mean well and other than the above it's been a lot of fun.