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Although computer programming has existed in its modern form for half a century, it still eludes all but a small fraction of society. While programming is an inherently difficult activity, there are currently many barriers, both mechanical and sociological, that prevent large portions of the population from learning to program a computer. Learning to program a computer is hard.
Alice address both the mechanical and sociological barriers that currently prevent many students from successfully learning to program a computer. Alice addresses the mechanical barriers to programming by making it much easier for students to create programs. Rather than having to correctly type commands according to obscure rules of syntax, students drag-and-drop words in a direct manipulation interface. This user interface ensures that programs are always well-formed. In addition, Alice reifies object-based programming by providing animated, on-screen 3D virtual objects. Alice makes learning to program easier. And it's fun.
Sociological barriers are far more complex. Alice addresses the specific needs of the subpopulation of middle school girls. By supporting storytelling, an intrinsically motivating activity for middle school girls, Alice will make programming a means to an exciting end.
Operating system requirements: Windows ME, Windows 2000, or Windows XP
Minimum hardware requirements: A Pentium running at 500 MHz or better + a VGA graphics card capable of high (16 bit) color + 128 MB of RAM + video resolution of 1024x768
Alice is a 3D Interactive Graphics Programming Environment for Windows 95/98/NT built by the Stage 3 Research Group at Carnegie Mellon University. The Alice project is a public service to the wider computing and artistic communities; our hope is to make it easy for novices to develop interesting 3D environments and to explore the new medium of interactive 3D graphics. The current version of Alice authoring tool is free to everyone and runs on computers that are commonly available for reasonable prices. Worlds created in Alice can be viewed and interacted with inside of a standard web browser once the Alice plug-in has been installed.
Alice is primarily a scripting and prototyping environment for 3D object behavior, not a 3D modeler; this makes Alice much more like LOGO than AutoCAD. By writing simple scripts, Alice users can control object appearance and behavior, and while the scripts are executing, objects respond to user input via mouse and keyboard.
Alice is not a 3D modeling program, but it does read many common 3D file formats including .DXF and .OBJ formats. Objects can be converted to Alice format from .3DS format using a special 3D Studio Max plug-in. The Alice core distribution includes a large library of textured models.
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