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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?

#91

Post by rkoots »

freefrog334433 wrote: post #71

I started a coding class at school because my 8yo preferred learning with friends. I made a website for parents to see, at http://rustycc.com.au/whyrust for more details of why I chose Rust. I used Rust, partially because like you, I started with C at an early age, courtesy of my Academic father, who placed me in front of a Unix mainframe at the Uni "babysitting", and older children taught me. To make it fun, I devel…

We faced something similar and ended up creating an internal style and PR review guide — might be helpful: https://rkoots.github.io/styleguide/

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

#92

Post by aptj »

@all Don't forget to help your kids learn to communicate, cooperate, stand for the healthy life on this wonderful planet (our common habitat) and resist being fooled and bullied.

> Veritasium: How One Company Secretly Poisoned The Planet https://youtube.com/watch?v=SC2eSujzrUY

Edits: minor typos.

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

#93

Post by antfarm »

chasil wrote: post #66
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…

When I was younger, the "logo" computer language was well-regarded for education of the young. It is now a JavaScript platform: https://turtlespaces.org/ Historical background may be helpful: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language) Smalltalk, as the founding language for object-oriented programming, was originally targeted at children. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk I don't think any op…

There is a turtle graphics framework in the Python standard library: https://docs.python.org/3/library/turtle.html

Pharo is a cross-platform implementation of the classic Smalltalk-80 programming language and runtime system: https://pharo.org/

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

#94

Post by sizzle »

I wonder if the next generation of dads will be teaching their kids how to ‘vibe code’ with fun and simple prompting in the age of LLMs.

This is readily accessible to non tech savvy parents and was never an option before, but here we are in 2025 with AI coding tools front and center.

What about using LLMs to help break down the concepts in kid friendly terms, lowering the cognitive load for exhausted parents.

I can even see it as an extension of your lesson plan, further guiding them like a virtual tutor version of yourself. Thoughts?

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

#95

Post by bigs »

My 8yo has an iPad with Osmo Awbie which he loves. You use physical tiles to program steps in a logic game like “move right 3”, “turn 90deg”…

They have a bunch of other programs too but for some reason I seem to only be able to find them on Amazon now.

He did want to create Roblox levels and Blender based characters and it was just too much to start with.

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

#96

Post by gus_massa »

Probably start with a turtle, like https://docs.python.org/3/library/turtle.html

First just graphics, then functions without parameters to make a fixed drawing on demand, then add a parameter to choose size or color...

For games I think it's better to use absolute coordinates, so perhaps redo most of that without a turtle (and without rotations).

> That said, I wonder whether focusing on CS fundamentals is worth it. Knowing fundamentals is always useful, ...

Wait a little, until they learn to use the editor and run simple programs. Try to focus in teaching nice habits like not too many globals, but how many bits has a byte can wait.

> ... but learning to collaborate with an AI is probably the more important long-term skill.

I'd not worry too much. They will learn faster than you.

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

#97

Post by iamwil »

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?

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

#100

Post by reacharavindh »

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..
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