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

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

#201

Post by diarrhea »

jonfromsf wrote: post #130
dave_sid wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely. I don’t understand the recent trend to believe that we need to get kids into software engineering as soon as they pop out of the birth canal. My friend is an accountant. If he asked me for advice on how to make spreadsheets more fun for his kid I’d think he had something against his kid. In the words of Pink Floyd “Hey! Nerds! Leave them kids alone!”

My kids LOVE making spreadsheets. They use it to track points in various competitions and games and stuff like that. The script is actually a good entry point into programming too (simple stuff like SUM and AVERAGE, and constants like $A$1 or whatever).

While there's good things for a kid to learn from spreadsheets, it might also do harm because it's so dissimilar to "the real thing".

It's like when students learn MatLab. While much closer to regular software engineering than spreadsheets, it is still different enough for all the wrong basic concepts to sneak in and manifest. Switching to a classic programming language afterwards might actually be harder that way (not only learn all the new stuff, but unlearn/unlink the old stuff).

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

#203

Post by fsloth »

Son got through Scratch book and then got bored. Has not been interested at all in programming after that.

Daughter did some scratch and some web programming and then got bored.

Lego Mindstorms - son built through the robots that were included and then got bored.

Hour of code (both) - did some basic exercises and then got bored.

Both love to build stuff in Minecraft and enjoy making quite elaborate machines there (elaborate in the context of Minecraft).

Both are doing fairly well in school. Programming just does not seem to be intrinsically interesting to them. And that's just fine.

Basic language skills and math is far more important for professionals when they get to workforce rather than low level tinkering in the general context. If they don't show inbuilt desire to program I don't see any reason why I should push them there. I started programming only after turning 20 and have a pretty good career at it. If you love programming it's never too late to start :)

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

#204

Post by nutanc »

Got my 6 year old to write a python program. He was so excited the computer did the homework for him. This is a fun way to introduce programming.

Example session:

>>>number_of_passengers_travelling=672

>>>number_of_passengers_got_down=21

>>>total_remaining=number_of_passengers_travelling-number_of_passengers_got_down

>>>print(total)

His only question was, do I have to type so much and I said yes. There is no way I am letting my kid name variables v1 and v2 :)

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

#205

Post by koonsolo »

GraffitiTim wrote: post #24

My daughter (who just turned 4) seemed like she might like programming, so I started out having her "program" a stuffed walrus, by telling it whether to go forward, backward, left, or right to get to a piece of food. Her natural inclination was to point to where it should go, so I first taught her that the walrus doesn't understand pointing or the word "here", just the directions. Then we started "programming each ot…

If you want the non-digital game for this: RoboRally https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/18/roborally

It's actually pretty fun, even for grown-up coders ;)

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

#206

Post by Dirlewanger »

sharker8 wrote: post #67
dave_sid wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely. I don’t understand the recent trend to believe that we need to get kids into software engineering as soon as they pop out of the birth canal. My friend is an accountant. If he asked me for advice on how to make spreadsheets more fun for his kid I’d think he had something against his kid. In the words of Pink Floyd “Hey! Nerds! Leave them kids alone!”

Actually making accounting fun for kids is also a good idea and should be encouraged.

Seeing as accounting is on its way to being mostly automated in the coming decades, this is not good advice.

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

#207

Post by rorykoehler »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #182
dorkwood wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do many people grow up with a love of math due to this common practice, though? I would have thought the opposite.

That's more of a problem with the school system, which force-feeds maths (and other subjects, most of them hated just as much) into kids at a pre-set pace, with no regard for quality or making it interesting for the children. Which is why I'm also worried that including coding in the basic school curriculum is only going to make people grow to hate it.

That's a problem with schooling not subjects. Industrial revolution school systems don't fit the 21st century

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

#208

Post by majewsky »

dragonwriter wrote: post #77
lmilcin wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t understand the recent trend You are mistaken about that "recent" part. Parents have always wanted their kids to go to best schools and learn for well paying, prestige jobs. It's just that what is well paying has changed. Why wouldn't I want my kids to be interested in something that will get them good start in life, that could be groundwork for their future careers ASSUMING it is fun for them and they are d…

> Parents have always wanted their kids to go to best schools Parents haven't even always wanted their kids to go to school.

> Parents haven't even always been able to send their kids to school.

FTFY

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

#209

Post by gcatalfamo »

mvolfik wrote: post #172
mywittyname wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A Texas Instruments programmable calculator. He read the manual, played with it a bit, then found out he could automate some of his homework. Then found out he could make simple games. Then fairly impressive games. Some thing never change. This is literally how I started programming too. "Hey, I can automate my homework" -> "Wait, I can write a program to play poker with all the time I saved by not doing homework."

Wait what you guys actually save time by automating things?

Underrated comment

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

#210

Post by pradn »

jonfromsf wrote: post #130
dave_sid wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely. I don’t understand the recent trend to believe that we need to get kids into software engineering as soon as they pop out of the birth canal. My friend is an accountant. If he asked me for advice on how to make spreadsheets more fun for his kid I’d think he had something against his kid. In the words of Pink Floyd “Hey! Nerds! Leave them kids alone!”

My kids LOVE making spreadsheets. They use it to track points in various competitions and games and stuff like that. The script is actually a good entry point into programming too (simple stuff like SUM and AVERAGE, and constants like $A$1 or whatever).

I also loved making spreadsheets as a kid. I remember I'd get books about dinosaurs and add information about them to a sheet - latin name, size, height, etc. IIRC my dad accidentally deleted the file at some point, or it got lost somehow.
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