Phrogram

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Phrogram is a commercial programming language designed to be understandable and appealing to beginning and intermediate programmers of all ages. Its predecessor, Kid's [sic] Programming Language (KPL) was first released in August 2005. Phrogram was first released in October 2006 as v2.0; the current release is v2.2.

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[edit] Technical overview

Phrogram is a programming language and integrated development environment, or IDE, bearing some similarities to Visual Basic. The language supports a number of scalar and complex data types, including structures, but does not support the definition of objects.

Phrogram targets the Microsoft .NET Framework and provides many runtime functions and methods for interacting with that platform. Because of this, Phrogram is currently only available for the Microsoft Windows series of operating systems that support the .NET Framework.

A Phrogram program is a collection of nested code blocks. On the highest level is a Program block, and within this Method blocks and Function blocks are defined. Functions and Methods are both chunks of reusable code, available in the Program scope; Functions return values, while Methods may not. Data structures are defined within the Program scope. Variables must be declared and typed at the time of declaration.

The latest version of Phrogram, v2.2 (released December 2007), runs on Windows Vista (both 32 and 64 bit editions) as well as Windows XP and Windows 2000. Phrogram Express, the lower-priced version, does not include the Class Library Browser or the ability to export code to a free-standing executable package (capable of running outside the Phrogram IDE). Phrogram Academic, the full-featured version available for educators and students, is attracting some interest as a way of teaching programming but is not usable to teach programming on operating systems other than Windows or to teach the concept of portable programming.

[edit] Hello, World! in Phrogram

Program Hello_World
    Method Main()
        PrintLine ("Hello, World")
    End Method
End Program

[edit] Philosophy

Spinning Orbs
Spinning Orbs

Jonah Stagner started development on Phrogram (KPL) when he wanted to teach his children how to program. He discovered that the tools and technologies were not at all as beginner-friendly as they needed to be, or used to be. Since then Jonah, Jon Schwartz, Walt Morrison and David Witus, have formed the nucleus of the Phrogram team, working to develop the product (including extensions through add-in libraries) into a commercial venture focusing on the educational software value of Phrogram as an accessible programming language and environment.

The Phrogram Company's primary goal is to deliver a simple yet powerful set of tools that makes learning to program easy and fun. Phrogram (KPL) captures a novice's interest by the ease with which one can write attractive multi-media programs with eye-catching graphics, music, sound effects, and animations.

A secondary goal for Phrogram is providing a modern language with some features of advanced languages such as C++, Java, Visual Basic and C#, and Visual Basic syntax, to make the transition into those languages as easy as possible. Phrogram supports object-oriented programming (OOP) and allows for definition of classes and their associated properties and methods, which provides beginning programmers with an introduction to OOP programming.

To accomplish these goals, Phrogram's developers built it to run on .NET Framework 2.0 which was released in November 2005. Phrogram intends to be fully compatible with other languages that use the .NET Framework, so that runtime libraries can be shared in either direction.

[edit] Other information

Phrogram is commercial software with a 30 day trial period. Phrogram’s user interface is available in several different languages by replacing the default xml file with a localized file, available in the downloads area of the Phrogram site.

Phrogram is suitable for a first programming course at any level of education, and is being used by primary and secondary schools and in universities in the US, Canada, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand. Among the colleges using Phrogram in computer programming courses are Ohio State University, in the US, Waikato Institute of Technology and Unitec Institute of Technology, in New Zealand.[citation needed]

[edit] External links