Quorum

[music]

>> Instructor: If you’re a camera,
a 3D camera,

and you’re looking at her,

and she’s pointing in that direction,

the question is

what do you call X,

what do you call Y,

and what do you call Z?

>> Student: I would want to take

all the knowledge that I've learned
throughout this camp using Quorum

and maybe develop my own game
maybe later down the line.

>> Student: I really want to teach others.

That’s sort of
what I like to do

and with Quorum I can
do that much easier.

[music]

>> Instructor: We’re now going to say "box."

>> Narrator: Technology jobs are in demand

and an understanding
of computing and coding

are important for anyone
pursuing these opportunities.

But learning programming languages
can be difficult for any new student

including some students
with disabilities.

That’s why Quorum was created.

>> Andreas Stefik: My name is Andreas Stefik.

I'm an assistant professor
of computer science

at the University of Nevada
at Las Vegas.

I invented the Quorum
programming language at first

then my wife and I

actually created several
versions of it together.

It was originally designed
to try to help

blind or visually impaired students
learn to program more easily.

The reason is because at the time
a lot of computer science

was moving toward
very visual content

and that in general
makes a lot of sense,

however, not if you're blind.

>> Richard Ladner: I'm Richard Ladner,

professor in Computer Science and Engineering
at the University of Washington.

>> Richard to student: So you really need
similar code

to what you have there already.

>> Richard: Children who are blind,
who can't see,

can actually program in Quorum

and make things that talk
or have sound or have music

so they're not always so visual.

If you look at almost all the tools
that are out there for children,

they're all super visual

and this one is visual and auditory

so that makes it much better
for everybody.

>> Lauren Milne: I'm Lauren Milne
and I'm a graduate student

at the University of Washington
in computer science.

I work with Richard Ladner

and I do a lot of research
in programming languages,

specifically for blind students.

It has full support for screen readers
and Braille displays

and it has a lot of features.

it's very easy to incorporate
audio in programs

and a lot of things you can
play around with in audio

so it means you can
make really accessible,

you can quickly and easily
make accessible games

or whatever you'd like
using Quorum.

>>Narrator: Quorum’s features
are universally designed,

making it an easier language
to learn in general.

>>Andreas: One of the reasons
why Quorum is easier

in some cases for people
to learn and grasp

is because the language is simpler

which impacts people
with learning disabilities.

For example, if I was to
tell the computer

to do something
over and over again

in a language like Java
I would say

for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {

Which "obviously" means that
we should do something 10 times.

In Quorum, I say

repeat 10 times.

>>Richard: I find personally
reading Quorum programs

a lot easier than reading
C programs or Java programs.

That I can understand them more easily
and so I feel like there are some

major advantages from the get-go.

Just that simple elegance.

Most languages after every single line
you have to put a semicolon.

Why you have to put a semicolon,
it seems to be just tradition.

It doesn't need to be there
and Quorum has no semicolons.

>> Lauren: I hypothesize
it could be really good

for certain students with
learning disabilities

that Quorum doesn't use braces;
it uses sort of indentations

and it uses the word, keywords instead
to indicate the end of loops.

>> Andreas to students: I want you
to type the word "model"

and then I want you to
type the word "box."

Now there’s a red underline here
because we haven’t added...

>> Narrator: Over the years,
Quorum has gained popularity.

>> Dominic: I'm Dominic and
I'm really into computers

and really enjoy using Quorum

and have used other computer
programs before like C++ and Java.

One of the things that stands out
to me in Quorum is the punctuation

and it's really easy because
you don't have to add in

all the semicolons and all the annoying
hash tags and "@" symbols and everything.

You just use words basically
which is way easier

than using all those
confusing symbols

and I think that makes it easier
for me to program in Quorum

than other languages.

>> Alyssa: Hi, I'm Alyssa.

What makes Quorum easier
is the way they wrote,

the way they program
for us to write the code.

So we don't have
to add semicolons

and brackets and parentheses
and all the stuff.

They made it easier.

You can just type in a word,
"output" let’s say, for example,

and then you could
write in quotes

whatever you want
the computer to say

and that's what makes it
a lot more unique than

other programming languages
like Java.

>> Mary: I’m Mary.

You can do a lot more things
in Quorum with less lines of code

than in some other things
I've used before.

>> Narrator: Quorum is evidence-based,

using the results of
scientific experiments

to determine how to make
the language easier to use.

>> Andreas: Quorum provides
two primary benefits.

One is everything is free

and then number two:
at the end of the day

all of the materials that we use
and that we give to people

are vetted both by
teachers and students

and are vetted in experiments
through the scientific method.

>> Narrator: The result
is a programming language

that is creating a more inviting
environment for computing students.

>> Lauren: A lot of people -
I've seen in intro classes that I've taught.

They come in, you know, and they
get really intimidated at first

when they start programming
and there's all sorts of bugs

and it can be very frustrating.

People drop out and very often
the only people who stick around

are people who have come in,
who come into the college course

with previous programming experience.

Anything that lowers that initial entry

is going to bring a lot more people,
a lot more diversity, because of that.