Mama (software) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Mama is an educational

Educational programming language

An educational programming language is a programming language that is designed primarily as a learning instrument and not so much as a tool for writing programs for real-world work.-Learning paths:...

object-oriented programming

Object-oriented programming

Object-oriented programming is a programming paradigm using "objects" – data structures consisting of data fields and methods together with their interactions – to design applications and computer programs. Programming techniques may include features such as data abstraction,...

language designed to help young students start programming by providing all language elements in the student mother tongue. Mama programming language is available in several languages, with both LTR and RTL language direction support.

A new variant of Mama was built on top of Carnegie Mellon's Alice

Alice (software)

Alice is a freeware object-oriented educational programming language with an integrated development environment . Later versions are implemented in Java. Alice uses a drag and drop environment to create computer animations using 3D models...

development environment, supporting scripting of the 3D stage objects. This new variant of Mama was designed to help young students start programming by building 3D animations and games.

History

The first versions of Mama - 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 - provided simple integrated development environment

Integrated development environment

An integrated development environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development...

(IDE) which contained support to standard elements such as text editor with syntax highlighting

Syntax highlighting

Syntax highlighting is a feature of some text editors that display text—especially source code—in different colors and fonts according to the category of terms. This feature eases writing in a structured language such as a programming language or a markup language as both structures and...

, compiler, debugger, output window, etc. Starting at version 1.5, Mama was integrated with the open source Alice IDE to support drag and drop programming and 3D animating. Mama versions are implemented in Java.

The current release of Mama, version 1.5.4, is available both in English and in Hebrew, and it runs on Microsoft Windows.

Design

Mama was designed to address following problems in educational programming:

Industrial programming languages are designed to be usable for production code, thus introducing additional complexity. Mama is designed solely to teach programming concepts, providing simple and quick development of programs.
Syntax errors frustrate students when start learning programming - Mama's variant over Alice uses a drag and drop environment to create computer animation
Computer animation
Computer animation is the process used for generating animated images by using computer graphics. The more general term computer generated imagery encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images, while computer animation only refers to moving images....

s using 3D models
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...

.

Mama language is a pure object-oriented language

Object-oriented programming

, while the Alice IDE is object based. That implies that while writing textual scripts with Mama language supports all object oriented elements (inheritance

Inheritance (object-oriented programming)

In object-oriented programming , inheritance is a way to reuse code of existing objects, establish a subtype from an existing object, or both, depending upon programming language support...

, polymorphism

Polymorphism in object-oriented programming

Subtype polymorphism, almost universally called just polymorphism in the context of object-oriented programming, is the ability to create a variable, a function, or an object that has more than one form. The word derives from the Greek "πολυμορφισμός" meaning "having multiple forms"...

, generic programming

Generic programming

In a broad definition, generic programming is a style of computer programming in which algorithms are written in terms of to-be-specified-later types that are then instantiated when needed for specific types provided as parameters...

, Observer pattern

Observer pattern

The observer pattern is a software design pattern in which an object, called the subject, maintains a list of its dependents, called observers, and notifies them automatically of any state changes, usually by calling one of their methods...

style event handling), creating objects and methods with the drag and drop interface is object based - there is no inheritance (and thus no polymorphism). The last observation may confuse beginners - thus it is suggested to use Mama scripts only as advance topics in CS courses.

Mama 1.5 main improvements over Alice version 2.2:

added Mama programming language as a (rich) scripting language - 3D scene objects can be manipulated using this scripting mechanism
full Unicode support
creation and editing of 3D objects
support uploading movies to YouTube and publishing in Facebook
support for scenery and characters
tutorial editor tool for instructors
movie export with audio
user standalone executables
better menu logic
many bug fixes

IDE Basics

There are several parts in IDE window: at the top you'll find the main menu and the toolbar, which let you execute commands such as create/open a worlds, import 3D objects into the world, create a standalone application, export the animation to YouTube, etc.
The five windows contained in the main window are:

object tree - contains the object list in the current world.
3D window - this is where objects are positioned, moved, turned, etc.
events area - lets you edit what happens upon occur of certain event.
details area - contains information about the currently selected object in 3 tabs: properties, methods and functions.
editor area (at the bottom) - that's where the program code is written, using drag and drop of instructions.

When in scene editing mode, two of the above parts are replaced:

control panel - replaces the events area, and displays various controls that help manipulating objects in the 3D window.
object gallery - replaces the editor area, and displays objects in hierarchic folders to be selected and embedded in the 3D window.

Following are the basic types available in Alice IDE:

Number - a numeric type, represents both integers and reals
Boolean - a boolean value, accepting either true or false
Object - a general Mama object
String - a string, a collection of characters
Color - an RGB color
TextureMap - a texture map
Sound - a sound
Pose - a captured pose of an object
Position - a 3D array defining a position in the 3D space
Orientation - a 3D array defining the orientation in the 3D space
PointOfView - a combination of a Position and Orientation

The control instructions available in the bottom of the editor area are:

doInOrder - execute a sequence of instructions sequentially
doTogether - execute a sequence of instructions simultaneously
if - execute a sequence of instructions sequentially only under a given condition
while - execute a sequence of instructions sequentially while a given condition holds
for - execute a sequence of instructions sequentially a given number of times
forAllInOrder - execute a sequence of instructions sequentially iterating over the given collection
forAllTogether - execute a sequence of instructions simultaneously iterating over the given collection
wait - wait a given amount of seconds
print - print the given data to the output console
assert - assert that a condition is true, display a message if the condition is false (new in Mama 1.5)
Script - add a free Mama script to the program
# - add a comment to the program

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

History

Design

IDE Basics

See also

External links