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Ask HN: How would you introduce kids to web dev?

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Re: Ask HN: How would you introduce kids to web dev?

#11

Post by andrewflnr »

hm-nah wrote: post #5

IDK… how about having them take a screenshot of their favorite website, then use GPT-4V to prompt and generate some boilerplate, then use VS Code Live Server extension to render the page. Illustrate how the HTML/CSS affect the web page. Could be a fun on-ramp to get them excited. Have to be careful giving them AI at the start, but who knows! It might be THE way to go. Do newbies start with notepad++ and a LAMP stack…

Newbies who want to understand what the hell they're doing don't start with any sort of boilerplate generator, no.

Re: Ask HN: How would you introduce kids to web dev?

#12

Post by andrewflnr »

Notepad, maybe notepad++. Fast iteration cycles, so they can see how their code affects what they see. When they've got the hang of that, JavaScript with rudimentary output; don't throw them into the DOM APIs right away. Worked for me, anyway. My first JS was mostly alert boxes.

Having a demo page sounds good as a reference, but I wouldn't use it as a template. With HTML I think you can and should start absolutely from scratch. Among other things you want to give your kids the chance to see what happens when various pieces are missing.

Re: Ask HN: How would you introduce kids to web dev?

#16

Post by gorjusborg »

logicalmonster wrote: post #8
houseatrielah wrote: post #7

Don't teach them 1997 web dev. Get them a React Udemy course or similar.

I'm not a computer science teacher, but I'd think that what React is even doing would be too confusing without understanding a basic bit of HTML and CSS first.

Nah, don't teach them letters and words. Teach them 'War and Peace', letters and words are so... outdated.

Re: Ask HN: How would you introduce kids to web dev?

#19

Post by drannex »

Developer tools first and foremost.

Second, maybe spin them up a tumblr blog, and let them hack on a theme (changing colors, etc), same thing as an old-school myspace setup and it taught _a lot_ of people in the early 2010s how to code.

Codecademy is another good one to get some basics in a more educational way, but it might turn them off because of that.

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