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Ask HN: What's the “best” way for a senior to begin learning how to code?

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Ask HN: What's the “best” way for a senior to begin learning how to code?

#1

Post by kcarter80 »

My mother told me her 72 year old friend wants to learn "how to code" and that she mentioned Python. She's starting from zero, so my first thought was that could be prohibitively complicated to get to "Hello World".

I'm interested in suggestions about what language/platform/resources I should suggest. Something she could show off to my mom and their friends would probably have value to her.

Re: Ask HN: What's the “best” way for a senior to begin learning how to code?

#2

Post by kognate »

I would suggest an iPad with Codea. Codea has a game called 'Cargo Bot' that teaches the basics of algorithmic thinking without the nomenclature that trips up a lot of people. The codea development environment has lots of tutorials and examples that let people explore and play with things in a nice way.

Re: Ask HN: What's the “best” way for a senior to begin learning how to code?

#4

Post by blacksmith_tb »

Personally I am skeptical of any "learn to X" attempt that doesn't actually address some need - so learning to make a simple website for a club or nonprofit, or getting a BBC Microbit and making it act like a stopwatch for brewing a cup of tea, something semi-practical, will stick better.

Re: Ask HN: What's the “best” way for a senior to begin learning how to code?

#5

Post by tomcam »

I’m going to give you an answer that I hope gets debunked.

It seems to me that if she can’t install Python then she may not in general be a good candidate.

In my experience a whole lot of programming jobs involves things not directly linked to programming, such as installing languages, deploying projects, dealing with internal tools, and so on. If you lack the wherewithal to install and run python after reading or watching a few tutorials, you may not be cut out for the job.

I say this as a guy who learns very very slowly and who has to work extra hard to get the basics.

Re: Ask HN: What's the “best” way for a senior to begin learning how to code?

#7

Post by DoreenMichele »

tomcam wrote: post #5

I’m going to give you an answer that I hope gets debunked. It seems to me that if she can’t install Python then she may not in general be a good candidate. In my experience a whole lot of programming jobs involves things not directly linked to programming, such as installing languages, deploying projects, dealing with internal tools, and so on. If you lack the wherewithal to install and run python after reading or wa…

I hope people debunk the hell out of this.

I was an extremely good student who had all kinds of accolades but I'm also seriously handicapped. I've wanted to learn how to code for more than a decade and I've had people tell me I'm simply not really interested (because I'm not succeeding).

That's not true.

I don't know what piece I'm missing to get traction on the learning process, but I seriously want to learn.

I will add that at age 72, if she just uses it as a time filler and "never accomplishes anything," it's her time to fill as she sees fit. Why should anyone care if she studies and studies and never produces a single thing?

Re: Ask HN: What's the “best” way for a senior to begin learning how to code?

#8

Post by jpindar »

I would suggest replit.com. No setup involved, it (and all your code) is always available on any computer or phone.

Once you log in, it's one click to choose python (or another language), one click to 'Create repl', and you can start typing code. One click to run it.

There's also tutorials, various templates to start from and other people's code to learn from.

Re: Ask HN: What's the “best” way for a senior to begin learning how to code?

#9

Post by Aromasin »

elefantastisch wrote: post #6

https://www.freecodecamp.org Bite-sized pieces, sensible order of presenting concepts, everything you need is in the browser.

That site is the one I used to get started with JS many moons ago when all they offered were that, HTML, and CSS. It's a fantastic resource that I can't recommend enough.
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