Release Date: August, 2015

Updates:

These are the learning objectives for this lesson.

When you click on the object in the scene window always ensure that the object and not the world itself
has been selected. You can check this by reading the name that is displayed in the drop down menu.

These tabs are where all of your programming statements in Alice will come from. Procedures for actions
and functions for information.

You will cover creating your own procedures later in the course. Alice 3 has lots of built in procedures that
will enable you to manipulate your objects.

A function is used to return information about your object. These have to be used in conjunction with
procedures to create programming statements.

Alice executes code in a procedural order. The code at the top will execute first and then the next lines of
code in turn till it reaches the bottom of the code.

These control statements can be dropped into the code editor by clicking and dragging them into whatever
position you want.

An object as well as all of its sub-parts can move in these directions.

Turn and roll are the two procedures that get mixed up most when starting out with Alice. Choosing the
wrong one generally creates some "interesting" animations.

Any statement that has been added to the code editor can have its argument values changed at any time.

As in all programming environments never create an extensive amount of code before testing that it works.
You should code small animations and test them regularly.

Arguments in Alice teach about the use of variables within other programming environments. Their values
can be changed by the code at any time.

Using these methods you should be able to give your arguments any value that is within the scope of the
argument's type.

As you learn to build more complex coding structures you will increasingly use placeholder values within
Alice 3.

Removing parts of the statement saves you having to delete and recreate code statements from the very
beginning. This is a very useful tool within Alice that saves a lot of time.
If you delete a statement and then regret it you can always use undo (CTRL + Z) to bring it back.

You need to retest the animation after every change. Something that worked perfectly well before may
not work anymore because of a change you made elsewhere.

Using testing statements can be very useful as it lets you get information about the flow of the code and by
displaying it to screen you can evaluate the result.

Disabling code blocks can save a lot of time so that you are not constantly re-testing code that has already
been fully tested.

Always re-enable all code for final testing.

Comments are crucial to understanding how code works. It is a good habit to get into where you add
comments as you code. Never leave commenting to the end, it is much easier to add comments as you
code.

Comments are not compiled as part of your code so they have no affect on how your program runs. You
can add as many comments as you like. They can be used to explain what code does as well as explaining
the layout of your code.