Ask HN: It's 2022. Where should I direct the youths to learn about programming?

So... Child #2 (18 yo) is interested in learning programming. Good "with computers" and proficient in level-appropriate math but didn't grow up as a hacker like his old man (I'll refrain from making him learn turtle graphics and BASIC). Where should I point the kid to learn the basics?

I'm afraid that if I show him how to download (or, better yet, build) emacs, how to build SBCL, install SLIME, etc... and hand the kid copies of SICL and PCL someone will call child protective services on me. I imagine there was a time when the answer would have been java/awt, but those days seem long gone. Maybe there was a let's do it all in javascript phase, but that doesn't seem to be the answer today.

So... modern starter pack? VS Code and Python? Tell him to learn Pandas/SciPy/NumPy?

Are there any highly recommended online courses for learning this stuff?

Perhaps looking into some game engine might be a fun thing for a young person? Phaser.io or Love2d or something along those lines.

Interesting. I'm scarred from spending years learning how to sharpen axes and shave yaks. Maybe the kids today don't need to do nearly as much of that anymore.

I'd definitely recommend freecodecamp for learning whatever language you'd like to get him started with. After watching one of their tutorial videos, your son could have a look at other videos for the particular language if there's something in particular he'd like to do.

Python is great for beginners, it's usually the first language taught in schools.

Web development is also really easy and rewarding, which makes it a particularly good route to get someone started in programming. Just remember to guide him through JavaScript libraries after learning html, CSS and JavaScript. When I first started learning web dev, I didn't know about frameworks like react and angular which caused me to waste a lot of time rewriting things which could have been made as react components. It was a lot more difficult to maintain the website I already made at that point.

Like you said replying to someone else's comment, game development is good for getting into programming. Although, make sure he is aware of the other routes, as game development isn't always the best career path even though it might sound fun at first.

Finally, let him make choices. You shouldn't have to decide everything for him, it's a good skill as a programmer to be able to look things up yourself. Maybe ask your son to find out what he would prefer to do, although if you already have some experience, of course let him know if there's anything that could help him get started in programming quicker.

Enjoy the rest of your day!

Perhaps approaching from the point of view of programming as a means to end might be helpful? If they have any hobbies or academic projects that could benefit from automation or using computers, that might be a good starting point?

For example, when I started studying engineering, it was great to see solutions of differential equations and ways to solve them on computers. Others have suggested games which could be great if they enjoy gaming and want to know more behind the scenes. Basically my approach would be to find a problem or two and use programming to show that computers can do wonderful things once we learn how to interact with them in various ways.