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Ask HN: 12 year old tech savvy girl – books, programs, events, advice?

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Re: Ask HN: 12 year old tech savvy girl – books, programs, events, advice?

#81

Post by hatsunearu »

gravypod wrote: post #70
hatsunearu wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 on eevblog. I started watching when I barely learned basic physics E&M and calculus, and now I'm confident that I can tackle all sorts of electronics all thanks to him. Though I was a highschooler back then and I had so much free time and watched 600+ videos in about 6 months, so not for everyone imo.

I'm in college so I'm using it to break from CS to EE. Far better then taking our schools EE classes since I can do it at my own pace and I learn things from someone who is currently practicing in the field (who seems to be quite good at it).

In high school, I learned top down--projects first, math second. Now in school doing EE, I do bottom up--math first, projects second. I think having that top down experience in high school was tremendously helpful because I have experience in the entire full stack -- transistors to Javascript.

Re: Ask HN: 12 year old tech savvy girl – books, programs, events, advice?

#82

Post by sn9 »

She can learn just about anything nowadays from sites like Coursera, edx, and Udacity.

Books like Realm of Racket can be fun introductions to programming that happen to teach some advanced stuff.

Books that the parent's might like are Carol Dweck's Mindset, Barbara Oakley's A Mind for Numbers, and Angela Duckworth's Grit. If she shows an interest in mathematics, the Art of Problem Solving books and forums are great.

Re: Ask HN: 12 year old tech savvy girl – books, programs, events, advice?

#83

Post by qume »

rahkiin wrote: post #69
noobermin wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What I would NOT recommend is starting straight up with traditional coding that is not designed with beginners and kids in mind. Don't throw python, java, C, etc. at them. Let them follow their interests: games, wearables, etc., and learn coding in pursuit of that interest, not force them to learn coding for coding's sake. No, this isn't the best advice in my opinion. Don't decide for the kid what is for them or wha…

This. I learned assembly and C at 12. It can be done, because I wanted to.

Me too.

I don't disagree with these warm and fuzzy environments for kids to learn, but that existed when I was a kid - logo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language) - and I thought it was a joke. It was demotivating and condescending rather than encouraging.

I have a 18 month old, and I don't know the answer yet, but got to figure it out soon...

Re: Ask HN: 12 year old tech savvy girl – books, programs, events, advice?

#85

Post by jeszicawii »

heisnotanalien wrote: post #25
corysama wrote: post #9

A friend of mine has a daughter who really enjoys http://girlsmakegames.com/ http://makezine.com/ and the http://makerfaire.com/ have done a great job with a community that encourages kids with a variety of interests. http://www.meetup.com/ is great for finding people in your area who want to geek out together over something in common. I don't have great book recommendations other than https://www.amazon.com/Manga-Gu…

Just showed Girls Make Games to my 14 year old daughter and all she said was how condescending...

Everything re girls in technology is condescending.

Re: Ask HN: 12 year old tech savvy girl – books, programs, events, advice?

#86

Post by EnderMB »

noobermin wrote: post #47

Everyone is different, but for me at 14 (a bit different from 12, I know, and I'm male) all I needed was a compiler and tutorials online. But that was key, the internet connection paid for by my parents, something not many people on my island had access to, made all the difference in the world for me. The best thing you can do is be available and provide access to knowledge, don't funnel her into particular framework…

I can't recommend this enough. I've worked with a couple of youngsters in a professional capacity through work experience programmes, and the ones with a drive to do well from 16 onwards are those that are given the freedom to make their own choices in tech. They developed their tech habits in the same way that many of us did, they downloaded the same tools we use, and they started building stuff.

One thing I'd recommend, if they still have the tech bug at around 16, is to see if they can do some kind of work experience in industry at an early age, ideally over the summer holidays. A lot of kids benefit from being around those that do tech on a regular basis, and it's a great feeling for them to work on the same stuff as we do. Even if they're picking up some less important tasks, or are re-doing the company site, it's still a great experience for them.

Re: Ask HN: 12 year old tech savvy girl – books, programs, events, advice?

#87

Post by paulryanrogers »

microcolonel wrote: post #54
noobermin wrote: post #47

Everyone is different, but for me at 14 (a bit different from 12, I know, and I'm male) all I needed was a compiler and tutorials online. But that was key, the internet connection paid for by my parents, something not many people on my island had access to, made all the difference in the world for me. The best thing you can do is be available and provide access to knowledge, don't funnel her into particular framework…

I second the "play" approach. My second programming experience was in assembly at age ~10 and it has made a huge difference in my growth and now in my career. Leave her alone with a compiler and an internet connection. :-)

My father did this as well. Though I didn't like QBasic. So instead I focused on batch scripting--to get games running--then modding.

Key to modding seems to be start with a game they like.

Re: Ask HN: 12 year old tech savvy girl – books, programs, events, advice?

#88

Post by sliken »

12 year olds are quite smart. Send them this page and see if anything attracts their interest. It's a bit harder these days than it was 10-20 years ago where there were many less distractions.

I'd recommend showing them "cool" things that use programming. Wearables, small automated things, computer controlled squirtguns, 3d printers, visit a local maker space, etc.

Sure there's many people that self started decades ago and taught themselves programming from scratch with minimal resources. But lets face it, those people are the exception not the rule.

Re: Ask HN: 12 year old tech savvy girl – books, programs, events, advice?

#89

Post by theknarf »

I myself started to program at the age of 11. At that time my father bought a book and learned a little Visual Basic, he then got introduced it to me and I was hooked. After that I borrowed an old book he had on HTML/CSS (creating webpages) and after that I started picking up books in the library.

I think that you should try to let her learn to create webpages with HTML & CSS, and then later she could try to learn JavaScript. It's an relatively easy place to start, and you're learning real world skills. I tend to disagree with people who want children to learn "Python Scratch" or other toys that you'll never get any use for.

Theres a lot of resources online (ex. http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp), and on YouTube. But I will always recommend to start with a good book, the "For Dummies" series is usually very good (ex. "Beginning HTML5 and CSS3 For Dummies").

Re: Ask HN: 12 year old tech savvy girl – books, programs, events, advice?

#90

Post by a-saleh »

As a father of a two year old daughter, I think I will be trying to figure this out few years down the line :-)

I remember fondly attending a coding course when I was around ~10. It was early 2000, so we used Visual Basic for Applications embedded in Office 97 :-) 5 to 10 kids + teacher. We were writing silly text adventures, and poem generators and then moved onto writing simple games.

Interesting development later on was, that girls in my group pushed for more and more math (I remember proving irrationality of sqrt(2) was a big topic) while boys were interested more in the coding, especially if the output was something visual.

So, remember that tech might be physics or math as well, at least where I come from there were many extra curricular activities I could choose from in this area :-)

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