Ask HN: Please share your experience teaching your kids to program

https://appsbykids.org/ is a hastily thrown together site showing some of my work with kids.

I've been running volunteer computer clubs at schools my daughters attend, pre-covid anyway. I've also run a summer immersion program for basic software design principles using the Scratch language for Girls Who Code. We've played with Adafruit Circuit Playground dev boards, written a "choose your own adventure" engine with Python, and added pixel graphics to some simple Javascript games, where the kids drew animation frames in a barely functional editor I wrote.

The first thing I'd call out is that 7 is really young. 5th grade is the point where kids can start to "get it" beyond basic maze problem solving things (e.g., code.org's Minecraft puzzle - hop Alex around the creeper and into the house). Since you're a dev, and he's enthused about it already, he can probably flex those muscles a little early.

Beyond age, the complexity of what you're doing matters a lot. Kids want to see something get on the screen right away, and they want to make a code change that changes what it does. Building a program from scratch is a chore, and something as simple to us as nested if statements will throw them for a loop.

The most success I had was building a simple program without them, and letting them experiment with changing values. That may sound like cheating, but it gets the gears turning, and before too long they're able to follow along with making a broader logic change, and soon enough even following along with you adding a new feature.

I was in a classroom setting with a bunch of kids, and they tended to like being in small groups and comparing notes, or play each others games.

Sideways thinking is important. For example, the main draw of Circuit Playground is making the LEDs do things, but they also have an accelerometer. A good exercise was figuring out how to read the tilt position, and figure out which light was lowest, and light up just that one. Instant fidget spinner. Building on that, I threw them for a loop by using the same principle where the tilt was input to a computer program. Suddenly the thing they were programming before to flash lights was now a game controller.

Keep it fun, let him screw around too long on things he builds instead of learning software engineering at an "acceptable" rate. He can learn fast, but complexity will probably be a struggle, so growing slowly is just fine. Encourage him to explore concepts from different angles.

Hope that helps.

I recommend Scratch and editor.p5js.org

My kid is 7. He can't really code alone, but he can do nontrivial modifications to Scratch programs based on trial and error, he can create very simple but visually interesting p5js apps like this: https://editor.p5js.org/skinner/sketches/xjUwFm1pF , and he enjoys a lot being the product designer when we create more complex p5js apps like this: https://editor.p5js.org/skinner/sketches/bPh8JRHrV .

My father tried to introduce me to programing when I was 12, BASIC, but it didn't go well, nor did it go well when I tried to learn every subsequent language. Being ADHD I needed instant gratification with minimal effort, to pull me deeper in so I wouldn't bounce to the next thing. Programing was chaotic, hard to keep straight, and frustrating because my ego wouldn't let me say "hey, you don't have all the answers, let's go figure out what we're missing."

So my advice: Help him to understand that when an answer to a problem is not visible, it doesn't mean he's dumb, etc. It means he doesn't have the right puzzle piece of information, and needs to find it first. (i.e. a formula, code block, etc.) Be ok with not knowing the answer, and be ok that he will need to learn in order to apply knowledge (like puzzle pieces) to the problem.

Relevant blog post for a slightly older kid: https://stopa.io/post/246

I taught my 15 year old python programming over summer. We used the material provided by this course [1]. It worked out very well for us.

We took a little detour at one point and I taught her basic skills to navigate around Linux terminal. Files, directories, editors, basic operational stuff.

Then I took another little detour and showed her ropes on git and github.

Then we got back to the python course and now I encouraged her to push everything she practices on her github account which she has been doing since.

Now that the course is over, we have started working on a project that aims to manage personal income tax. I chose that project because it could start simple and can evolve to be as complex as you want it to be. However, ultimately it is all simple arithmetic. The project is going very well so far. We are discovering new things about taxation almost every single day.

We are at a stage where learning vim would really help her so we plan to take another detour next week and start with a vim tutorial until she gets comfortable.

[1] https://help.uis.cam.ac.uk/service/support/training/download...