This combination of a diagram-rich Kindle book and free online interactive exercises provides a learning curve so gentle, it's good for both adults and 9-year-olds: http://www.ASmarterWayToLearn.com
Ask HN: What's a good resource for a 9 year old to learn programming?
11–20 of 22 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's a good resource for a 9 year old to learn programming?
#12I've heard excellent things about Scratch: http://scratch.mit.edu/
It IS excellent. It has full I18N support which is important for the rest of the world. My kids (who didn't speak English at the time) learned programming using scratch at the age of 8. They typically did animated presentations, and games like 'frogger'. I only needed to show some little things but they could figure out most of it by themselves or with the help of youtube.
Re: Ask HN: What's a good resource for a 9 year old to learn programming?
#13I think CodeCombat.com would do the trick, they just got accepted into YC w'12.
Re: Ask HN: What's a good resource for a 9 year old to learn programming?
#14My daughter (age 7) used Microsoft Kodu at summer camp this year and really liked it.
http://fuse.microsoft.com/projects/kodu
I haven't had time to play with it, but I loaded it onto a computer for her and she occasionally plays with it still.
Re: Ask HN: What's a good resource for a 9 year old to learn programming?
#15We developed an iPad app called GamePress. Its live in the app store for free. http://www.gamepressapp.com
Teachers have started using it to teach students about programming and game development.
It is similar to Scratch, but it is more powerful (and easier to actually make a game). The behaviour system has thing slike timers, if statements, math functions, variables.
So far from what we have been told by our users it is a great intro to programming concepts.
Keep in mind we never developed it for teaching programming! it was made as a fun and easy way to make and share video games!
Re: Ask HN: What's a good resource for a 9 year old to learn programming?
#16CodeHS has been fantastic.
I'm part of a project called Code Montana whose goal is to teach 1000 Montanan high schoolers how to program using CodeHS primarily. The project launched in September and we already have over 400 kids signed up.
Re: Ask HN: What's a good resource for a 9 year old to learn programming?
#17CodeHS has been fantastic. I'm part of a project called Code Montana whose goal is to teach 1000 Montanan high schoolers how to program using CodeHS primarily. The project launched in September and we already have over 400 kids signed up. http://codehs.org http://www.codemontana.org/
Just correcting the CodeHS link:
Re: Ask HN: What's a good resource for a 9 year old to learn programming?
#18Look at Microsoft smallbasic http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/cc950524.aspx
Re: Ask HN: What's a good resource for a 9 year old to learn programming?
#19I've heard excellent things about Scratch: http://scratch.mit.edu/
+1 for scratch. It's a great way for kids to learn programming without getting bored. Show them how to make an account and share their games with the community and they'll be hooked. The same skills learned from scratch transfer over to more advanced languages.
Re: Ask HN: What's a good resource for a 9 year old to learn programming?
#20I would (probably controversially) say there's plenty of time to learn programming later on in the teenage years. Children only start developing abstract reasoning skills around 12 years of age. Learning social reasoning skills is more important than internalizing the way a compiler works.