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Ask HN: How do you teach you kids about computers and coding?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you teach you kids about computers and coding?

#11

Post by steve_taylor »

I set up a Raspberry by with Kano OS for my 7-year-old (at the time) son. There were some toy coding apps, like Make Art and Hack Minecraft, and he had some interest, but I didn’t see anything that he could grow into over time, in terms of making more sophisticated programs as he gets more practice. They all seemed quite limited, although engaging.

I then set up my old Mac with Love 2D and Atom, but he wasn’t interested, because he’d also have to learn about files, directories and the command line.

He spends a lot of time on the iPad, so I recently bought Codea. With a bit of help, he was able to write code to draw some shapes and became very excited about it. I evaluated it myself and was able to make Pong in a few hours. It has loads of examples and can actually be (and has been) used to make quite sophisticated iOS games, right on an iPad. It helps to have a Bluetooth keyboard so the on-screen keyboard doesn’t occupy half the screen.

Re: Ask HN: How do you teach you kids about computers and coding?

#12

Post by Tempest1981 »

tmaly wrote: post #3

My daughter is almost 5 and she picked up Scratch Jr in ten minutes. I am writing my suggestions mostly from the context of a younger child. I approached it this way, I bought a book on Scratch Jr so I could get up to speed on it. I walked her through a few of the basics, and then I just let her take over after that. One other programming related activity we have done is the Learning Resources Code & Go Robot Mouse A…

Scratch is a great community, where it's easy to explore others' creations, and share. The language is block-based. The output is graphical. And you can run anyone's program, and then view the source to see how they did it. Not many data structures, iirc.

Re: Ask HN: How do you teach you kids about computers and coding?

#15

Post by msravi »

Rather than just coding, which can be pretty abstract for kids, I introduced my (almost) 11-yo son to the Arduino. The interface is pretty simple to explain for kids of that age - you have 2 places to put your code - the setup() and loop(), and the results are concrete - an led blinks, a motor turns, a car moves forward, etc. My son "got" Arduino programming easier than the graphical programming languages, but that might just be him.

He was also introduced to QBASIC at school (a year later), and he loves it. There are no INTs to declare, etc. Just your program. And graphics, sound, etc. is so easy to program.

Re: Ask HN: How do you teach you kids about computers and coding?

#18

Post by fermigier »

I have two kids aged 7. They've been playing, on and off, with ScratchJr over the last two years. They were first interested mostly in the "Paint-like" part of ScratchJr, but now are starting to make animations using the block language, and have much fun doing it.

I've recently installed the Lightbot app on my phone for them, and they like it too. It's a series of programming puzzles using a block language where you need to program a robot to move around a circuit and do some actions. It introduces programming concepts (subroutines, loops...) progressively and seem quite fun and challenging.

A few months ago, I let them play with Human Resources Machine, another similar game, but slightly more abstract, and with dark humoured theme. They didn't get the humour, but enjoyed it nonetheless. However, it was a bit too difficult for them, and I had to do most of the challenges for them.

When they get older, I hope to find a way (via emulation?) to have them play Robot Odyssey (cf. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/01/rob... ), though I'm not sure how today's kids would react to a game made in the 80s.

Re: Ask HN: How do you teach you kids about computers and coding?

#20

Post by rimliu »

hoodoof wrote: post #9

I'm waiting till he shows significant interest. If that never comes then I'm not going to try to make it happen. Much as I would like to be teaching programming to my kids, if they aren't that interested then such is life.

I am so happy that your comment exists. The "I love what I do so my kid must too" is not a good attitude to have, even for coding.
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