I'd like to point out the very underrated DrRacket (https://docs.racket-lang.org/getting-started/index.html), with some very nice material that works at the middle school level (http://www.bootstrapworld.org/)
How computer programming languages for kids have evolved and where they're going
61–70 of 125 posts
Re: How computer programming languages for kids have evolved and where they're going
#62I've always been suspicious of the looks-like-an-animal-with-a-name-and-a-smiley-face-I'm-a-grown-up-and-this-is-what-kids-like approach. I remember one of the coolest things about the apple II was that you could 'poke' the right memory address and get the speaker to click. That was magic when I was 12 and it didn't need a friendly name and a stupid grin. Until they're old enough for K&R (12?, 13?, 14?), maybe they s…
I strongly agree. Kids are smarter and much more adaptable than the people developing this stuff seem to think. I don't understand why we aren't just exposing them to real programming languages from a very young age, like their native tongue.
Re: How computer programming languages for kids have evolved and where they're going
#63I never liked anthropomorphic neotenized animals. Create a programming language with transformers or thundercats not a cat on meds (j/k, that project is cool, but you know what I mean!).
I learned to program with QBasic and I know many others learned to program with the ZX Spectrum or similar machines.
If kids can learn the abstractions of the English language, be high dans in Go, get accepted into college, and achieve incredible things, they can learn programming too.
I highly recommend the book "Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman", especially the chapter about how he fixed radios. This really reflects the magic of learning as a kid.
Re: How computer programming languages for kids have evolved and where they're going
#64> Research shows that children as young as 5 can grasp computational thinking concepts, so why not go there? "computational thinking concepts" What are they? I ask this in all seriousness. Why are there no links to the talked about studies in the article? Or are they there and I missed them?
Tufts is doing some great research in this area. They've seen kids as young as 5 learn these concepts by manipulating tangible blocks - https://ase.tufts.edu/DevTech/publications/computersandeduca...
Re: How computer programming languages for kids have evolved and where they're going
#65I've always been suspicious of the looks-like-an-animal-with-a-name-and-a-smiley-face-I'm-a-grown-up-and-this-is-what-kids-like approach. I remember one of the coolest things about the apple II was that you could 'poke' the right memory address and get the speaker to click. That was magic when I was 12 and it didn't need a friendly name and a stupid grin. Until they're old enough for K&R (12?, 13?, 14?), maybe they s…
100% agree. I think the best way to learn to code is to... write a lot of code. I'd bet that's how most of the self-taught people here learned.
Shameless plug: in Hack Club (https://github.com/hackclub/hackclub), our approach to teaching is to not actually "teach". Instead, we have a bunch of open-source workshops (https://workshops.hackclub.com) that walk high schoolers through the process of building a real thing (using real code), like a website or game. We don't expect them to understand everything that's happening. In fact, we expect learners to not understand 90% of what's happening -- our goal is to get people excited about hacking and have most of the learning happen when they're googling to build their own projects.
Re: How computer programming languages for kids have evolved and where they're going
#66I never liked anthropomorphic neotenized animals. Create a programming language with transformers or thundercats not a cat on meds (j/k, that project is cool, but you know what I mean!). I learned to program with QBasic and I know many others learned to program with the ZX Spectrum or similar machines. If kids can learn the abstractions of the English language, be high dans in Go, get accepted into college, and achie…
The question is whether you want learning programming at 14 to be as rare as getting accepted into college at 14.
Re: How computer programming languages for kids have evolved and where they're going
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
The first PC videogame I ever saw was a gorilla throwing a barrel at buildings. It was written in BASIC and came with our 286 back in 1989. I was really excited to learn how the monkey was drawn - out of the same ASCII blocks as everything else, obviously, but how ? - and excitedly opened the file in a text editor. It was a little overwhelming to my 7-year-old self to see just how many little subroutines and subproce…
Gorillas for QBASIC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorillas_(video_game)
MSDOS 5 used to come with QBASIC. Nibbles and Gorillas were great games and they included all the source code.
I used to play Gorilla's all the time when I was a kid. That was how I learnt about angles. My Dad drew a picture for me "This is 90 degrees, This is 45 degrees" it used to sit beside the computer.
I learnt a lot about programming from the DOS environment come to think of it. Our home PC used to have a text based menu program it would boot into. In order to add a program to the menu you needed to edit it, using something like a markup language. My Dad used to sit over my shoulder and talk me through adding programs to the menu.
Re: How computer programming languages for kids have evolved and where they're going
#68I never liked anthropomorphic neotenized animals. Create a programming language with transformers or thundercats not a cat on meds (j/k, that project is cool, but you know what I mean!). I learned to program with QBasic and I know many others learned to program with the ZX Spectrum or similar machines. If kids can learn the abstractions of the English language, be high dans in Go, get accepted into college, and achie…
The question is whether you want learning programming at 14 to be as rare as getting accepted into college at 14.
What I think is that education systems will evolve eventually that will be a reality for the ordinary person.
Text from educational materials can be optimized for readability, and explanations/illustrations can be enhanced to be more interactive and immersive (e.g: VR).
Re: How computer programming languages for kids have evolved and where they're going
#69I've always been suspicious of the looks-like-an-animal-with-a-name-and-a-smiley-face-I'm-a-grown-up-and-this-is-what-kids-like approach. I remember one of the coolest things about the apple II was that you could 'poke' the right memory address and get the speaker to click. That was magic when I was 12 and it didn't need a friendly name and a stupid grin. Until they're old enough for K&R (12?, 13?, 14?), maybe they s…
100% agree. I think the best way to learn to code is to... write a lot of code. I'd bet that's how most of the self-taught people here learned. Shameless plug: in Hack Club ( https://github.com/hackclub/hackclub ), our approach to teaching is to not actually "teach". Instead, we have a bunch of open-source workshops ( https://workshops.hackclub.com ) that walk high schoolers through the process of building a real thi…
Fantastic project! The resources are very nice. Thanks for posting them.
Re: How computer programming languages for kids have evolved and where they're going
#70Having animals and colorful bricks is okay, so long as we're not in conflict with what is actually fun about what is being taught here...
Programming is fun because we can control the machine, and make it do things... magically, at our whim, with the right combination of instructions.
So compared to that, having a cat walk towards a barn seems like a completely irrelevant layer of entertainment forcefully tailored to the taste of the students, who at best are distracted from the real fun, or at worst presumed to be incapable of understanding why programming itself might be fun.
For all practical purposes HTML is a great place to start. Immediate output, can share it online, and it's easy. And easy to expand upon with CSS and Javascript and everything else. Also Processing is great for an art cs class. Not to mention both web development and computer graphics being two highly relevant skills in today's job market (thought that is thinking a bit ahead considering the ages here, but better relevant than sorry).