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Ask HN: How are parents who program teaching their kids today?

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Re: Ask HN: How are parents who program teaching their kids today?

#101

Post by Waterluvian »

reacharavindh wrote: post #100
Waterluvian wrote: post #30

8 year old badly wants to be an engineer like his dad. :’) Public school got him into Scratch so he was animating things. The high school robotics team I mentor has Lego robotics kits for their community outreach program. Those kits use Scratch. So I got him a used kit and he spends an absolutely ridiculous amount of time making robots that do stuff. This started at a very young age: we gave him access to a windows P…

May I ask which Lego robotics kit you refer to? My 5 year old is mad about Lego, and motors and electronics. I’d love to connect them all into one thing for him for his 6th birthday..

I got a used Spike kit. But the new ones are very expensive. The Mindstorms NXT are older but also use Scratch and are pretty decent hardware. I’d definitely approach this by looking for a used set unless you’ve got money for it. :)

Re: Ask HN: How are parents who program teaching their kids today?

#103

Post by abstractbill »

iamwil wrote: post #97
abstractbill wrote: post #21

I started my kids on turtle graphics. There's a good implementation that comes with python that's very easy to get up-and-running, to the point where it quite reminds me of BASIC on the kinds of microcomputers I got started on as a kid.

What's the name of the implementation?

It's just "turtle": https://docs.python.org/3/library/turtle.html

Re: Ask HN: How are parents who program teaching their kids today?

#104

Post by PaulShin »

A fascinating question. As a founder building AI collaboration tools, this is a topic we obsess over daily.

You're wondering whether to focus on CS fundamentals or the skill of collaborating with an AI. My take is that this is a false dichotomy.

From my experience building an AI "teammate" that's integrated into our team's daily workflow, the most crucial skill of the next decade won't be one or the other. It will be using the fundamentals to ask the AI better questions.

The biggest challenge we see isn't the AI's ability to execute a task; it's our team's ability to frame a problem clearly and break it down into logical steps that the AI can understand. The best results don't come from our best pure coders, but from those who can translate a vague goal (like "make this design better") into a series of fundamental, actionable instructions.

So, I believe the original poster is on the perfect track. Teaching his son how to "break problems down" – how to create arrows, move them, and know when they hit – is the foundational skill for collaborating with any intelligence, human or artificial. He is not just teaching him how to code; he is teaching him how to think.

And that's the one skill that will never be outsourced or automated. Best of luck to the OP on his wonderful journey.

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